Superconductor Laboratory

Academicians Awarded Italian Science for Peace Prize

Academician and Director of the Academician Paul Ching-Wu Chu, and Institute of Physics Maw-Kuen Wu have been awarded the "Ettore Majorana – Erice – Science for Peace Prize" for playing leading roles in the advancement of science for peaceful purposes.

Dr. Chu and Dr. Wu were awarded the prize: "For their discovery of Y Ba2 Cu3 superconductor, the first system with transition temperature exceeding 77 degrees Kelvin, and for their subsequent contributions in researches of many novel superconducting systems. Dr. Wu and Dr. Chu are truly dedicated to the pursuit of truth and to the education of young scientists, and both of them embody the best of the spirit of Erice."

A ceremony will be hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican in Rome on 17th December to bestow the award.

The "Ettore Majorana – Erice – Science for Peace Prize" was established by the Sicilian Parliament. It recognizes the impressive achievements of the World Federation of Scientists (WFS), under the auspices of the Ettore Majorana Foundation and the Centre for Scientific Culture. Recipients are elected by the World Federation of Scientists.

The annual award includes a cash prize to assist recipients in their efforts to "promote science and peace throughout the world." The first edition of the prize was awarded in 1990. The prize is named after Ettore Majorana, an early 20th century theoretical physicist most well-known for his ideas about neutrino masses and also for his mysterious disappearance in 1938. Majorana was born in Sicily in 1906.

The WFS was founded in 1973. Currently over 10,000 scientists from over 110 countries are members of the federation. The most famous accomplishment of the WFS is the establishment of the ‘Erice Statement’ in 1982 which opposes the use of science for militaristic means and promotes the use of science for peace.

Dr. Chu is currently the President of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. He also holds the T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science at the University of Houston and is Executive Director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity.

Dr. Wu was made an Academia Sinica Academician in 1998. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow and Director, Institute of Physics. Over the course of his career he has received several awards including the Comstock Prize from The National Academy of Sciences (1988), the NASA Special Awards (1988), Tamkang Golden Eagle Award from Tamkang University (1989), the Bernd T. Mattias Prize (1994), the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship (1995), Member, Asia-Pacific Academy of Material NSTP for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (1998). In 2004, he was made a Foreign Associate, of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

Over the course of his career he has received the Leroy Randall Grumman Medal (1987), the Comstock Award (1988), National Medal of Science (1988), International Prize for New Materials (1989), the Texas Instruments Founder's Prize (1990), the Bernd Matthias Materials Prize (1994), the Freedoms Foundation National Award (2001), and the Russian Academy of Engineering (2005) Dr. Chu became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in1989 and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1996.

Reference:
Academia Sinica Newsletter 2008/12/08