The Balzan Prizes
"Culture and Science-
treasuring tradition, fostering innovation"

Press Release
e-mail: balzan@balzan.it
www.balzan.it
May 16th 2001

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  • The Balzan Prizes for 2002
  • New this year:
       - Prize money doubled: 4.000.000 Swiss francs (US $ 2.285.677) for the advancement of science and culture in the world
       - 2.000.000 Swiss francs ( US $ 1.142.838) for young researchers

  • Wednesday May 16, in Milan, the General Prize Committee of the Balzan Foundation, chaired by Senator Carlo Bo, chose the subjects in which the Balzan Foundation will award prizes for the year 2002.
    Two prizes will be awarded for subjects in the humanities:
       - Sociology
       - History of the Humanities

  • Likewise, two prizes will be awarded from among scientific disciplines:
       - Developmental Biology
       - Geology 
    Each Prize is worth 1.000.000 Swiss francs (US $ 571.419).
    Alone among major international foundations, the Balzan Foundation chooses each year different subjects within the sciences and the humanities. This enables it to encourage new, emerging, pressing research areas as well as supporting(to support?) important fields of study, possibly over-looked by other major international Prizes.

  • Treasuring tradition and fostering innovation are the hallmarks of the Balzan Prizes for this year, too.
    Over 100 applications from all over the world are being scrutinized by the General Prize Committee to identify the most deserving names in the following subjects:
       - Literary History and Criticism (post 1500)
       - History of Architecture (including town planning and landscape design)
       - Cognitive Neuroscience
       - Climatology
  • The names of the winners will be made public on September 12 in Milan.

Starting this year, for the first time,
each Balzan Prize will be worth 1.000.000 Swiss francs (US $ 571.419), making it one of the best endowed in the world.

Starting this year, for the first time,
half of each prize will have to be devolved by the winners themselves to research projects by young scholars. This makes it unique among major international Prizes, which offers the same opportunities to those who are already established and to those who have the potential to become so.

Balzan Prizes - Humanities 2001: Literary Criticism and History of Architecture
"Structures of the imaginary: texts, space and their history"

Literary Criticism and History (post 1500)
From Borges to Macchia: the Balzan Prizes for the study of literature
Throughout the years the Balzan Foundation has periodically awarded prizes for the study of literature rewarding through its choices a plurality of approaches in which the literary object may be deciphered and interpreted. In 1980 it was the turn of the genial provocations by master of fantastic literature Jorge Luìs Borges. Four years later the prize went to the rigorous stylistic analysis of Jean Starobinski. 1988 saw the award going to the comparatist René Etiemble for his work on texts in different languages and traditions and in 1992 Giovanni Macchia was rewarded for tracking literary themes and their developments.

History of Architecture (including town planning and landscape design)
Architecture, town planning, landscape: something which concerns us all.
The changes produced by humankind in the built environment have a privileged tie with history. Usually the task of history is to bring to life what is no longer there. But palaces, churches, city centres, gardens, - the topics of architecture, town planning, landscape design - are alive in our midst and their daily presence shapes our very life. We cannot remain indifferent to their history. The creative aspects of the built environment have always gone hand in hand with a methodical investigation of the past without which they would remain incomprehensible.

Balzan Prizes - Science 2001 : Neuroscience and Climatology
"The mysteries of humankind and the world: obscure dynamics of mind and meteo"

Cognitive Neurosciences
The most mysterious object in the universe: our brain. What do we know about it today?
Throughout the '90s, the "brain decade", our knowledge has dramatically increased of what remains the most sophisticated achievement of biological evolution. In what way have typically human functions - including all those processes we call "mind" - emerged from within a network of billions of neurons? This is not simply a speculative issue or something to do with artificial intelligence. By exploring this mysterious object we are also looking for an understanding of and therapies for brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's which are increasingly more common as life expectancy rises.

Climatology
Is climate changing ? The unpredictability of our knowledge in weather forecasting.
Not as long as twenty years ago scientists were unable to foresee the arrival in 1982 of "El Nino", the cyclical heating of waters in the Pacific caused by periodic variations linking the Ocean and the atmosphere. Today we know that this is just one of the natural phenomena which may influence climate on a planetary level. And while scholars now agree that the rise in the Earth's average temperature is due to the increasing use of fossil fuel, there is no knowing of exactly what kind of impact human activities will have on climate.

The Balzan Prizes are given by the Italian-Swiss Balzan Foundation, instituted in 1956, thanks to the generosity of Angela Lina Balzan, who had inherited a large estate from her father, Eugenio. She decided to use this in honour of his memory. Eugenio Balzan was born in Badia Polesine, in Northern Italy, in 1874, and spent a large part of his working life in Milan, at the Corriere della Sera, the most important Italian daily newspaper. He began his career as a reporter, becoming an adaministrative manager and also a share-holder of the same Corriere della Sera. He invested his fortune in Switzerland, where he settled definitively, in 1933, mostly for reasons of his anti-Fascism. Eugenio Balzan died in 1953 in Lugano.

The Balzan Prizes are amongst the most important humanistic and scientific awards in the world, both for the scientific rigour followed in assigning them, as well as for their financial value. This year there will be four Balzan Prizes, each worth one million Swiss francs
(US $ 571.419).

Beginning this year, the Balzan Prize-Winners will be asked to designate half of the Prize for research work, to be carried out preferably by young researchers. Through this innovation, perhaps the only one of its kind, the International Balzan Foundation will annually award 2.000.000 Swiss francs (US $ 1.142.838) for the promotion of future generations of scholars.

The Balzan Prizes are European Awards par excellence. The General Prize Committee is made up of 18 members, all European scientists and academicians. However, their choice of Prize-Winners is universal, with no distinctions being made regarding national boundaries.

The Balzan Prizes are interdisciplinary in nature. The categories range from the fields of Literature, Moral Science and Art, to Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, and Medicine. Over the last twenty years, the Balzan Foundation has consigned more than 29.629.291 Swiss francs (US $ 16.930.748) to 78 international scientists for their contribution in such varied fields as, for instance, Anthropology, Art History, Music, Geophysics, Epidemiology, and History of Economics.

At intervals of not less than three years, the Balzan Foundation also awards a special Prize for humanity, peace and brotherhood among peoples. In 2000, this Prize was awarded to Abdul Sattar Edhi, founder of the Edhi Foundation, a humanitarian organisation in Karachi, Pakistan.

The names of the Balzan Prize-Winners are made public every year in September, in Milan. The solemn Prize-giving Ceremony takes place alternatively in Rome and in Bern.

For more information, please visit the web-site of the International Balzan Foundation:
www.balzan.it