The Wolf Prizes, dubbed Israel’s Nobel Prizes, are to be awarded for the first time this year. They will go to nine scientists from around the world, in the spheres of agriculture, mathematics, chemistry, physics and medicine. The Wolf Foundation was established by a law passed in the Knesset in the summer of 1975. The Foundation’s funds of $10 million were donated by persons wishing to remain anonymous.
The purposes of the Foundation are to promote science and the arts, to grant scholarships to students and loans to universities, and to award prizes to well-known scientists and artists for their achievements on behalf of humanity and on behalf of friendly relations among peoples irrespective of citizenship, race, color, religion, sex or political outlook. The Foundation has a council which is chaired by the Minister of Education and Culture.
The Wolf Foundation prizes will go to: Prof. George F. Sprague, University of Illinois, and Prof. Emeritus John C. Walker, University of Wisconsin, for agriculture; Prof. I.M. Gelfand, Moscow State University and Prof. Emeritus Carl Ludwig Siegel, University of Goettingen, for mathematics; Prof. Carl Djessari, Stanford University, for chemistry; Prof. Chien-Shiung Wu, Columbia University, for physics; and Dr. George D. Snell, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine), Dr. Jean Dausset, Saint Louis Hospital (Paris), and Dr. J.J. van Rood, University of Leiden, for medicine.
The Wolf Prize in each scientific field totals $100,000. If a prize is awarded to more than one person, the amount is divided equally among them.
Each scientific field was dealt with by a three-member prize committee, all of them professors of world-wide renown, with one member of each committee being from Israel. The decisions of the prize committees are final and are not open to appeal. The prize-awarding ceremony will take place in the Knesset Building on April 10.
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