The winners of the last edition were“Frontiers of Knowledge Awards”The BBVA Foundation received their awards this week at a solemn ceremony in Madrid. They have been recognized for their contributionsShinya Yamanaka, which achieved thecell reprogrammingand has made regenerative medicine possible;Nicholas Stern, by measuring theeconomic cost of climate change; Gabor Somorjai, to discoverkey chemical reactionsin production and environmental processes;Edward O. Wilson, for coining and spreading the concept ofbiodiversity, and demonstrate its importance to humanity;Donald E. Knuth, to enrich and structure thecomputer language; Lars Peter Hansen, for designing the method used today by monetary analysts and decision-makers to extract conclusions from statistical data; theInternational Rice Research Institute (IRRI), for turning rice research into an effective weapon in the fight against hunger; YHelmut Lachenmann, for expanding the world of sounds like no other contemporary composer.
“Through the winners, we want to recognize the work and talent of the entire scientific community and creators,” Francisco González, president of the BBVA Foundation, said at the ceremony. “The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards bear the stamp of our time, they respond to the knowledge map of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” added González, who intends that they are an incentive for “young generations to take as a modelpeople passionate about researching, creating and innovating“.
In his acceptance speech,Edward O. Wilsonemphasized that at this point “we begin to understand thatto save the living world it will be necessary to discover and analyze the species that comprise it, many of which are still unknown to science. “Gabor Somorjaihighlighted that “microelectronics, new polymers, bioimplants such as heart valves and replacements for joints, hips and knees, and many other applications are possible thanks to the understanding of what happens on surfaces at the molecular scale.”
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Chemist Gabor A. Somorjai wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award for Basic Sciences
Edward O. Wilson, the “lord of the ants”, awarded by the BBVA Foundation
Helmut Lachenmann wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Contemporary Music
The International Rice Research Institute wins the BBVA Foundation Award for Development Cooperation
