Kavli awards to cover the Nobel gap
2005/06/26 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia
Nanotechnology, astrophysics and neuroscience. Here are the three areas that Mr. Fred Kavli will consider. The award will be given to those who make significant advances in them: a memory and a million dollars. With this, it aims to cover the shortcomings of the Nobel prizes. In fact, the Novels are taught in physics, chemistry, medicine and physiology, economics and literature. The Nobel Peace Prize is also awarded to someone who has worked for peace. It has no relation to science, but perhaps Mr. Nobel would have put that prize to forget that he was the father of dynamite.
Thanks to this, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Alfred was enriched by the invention of dynamite. When he died he abandoned a good of 9,200,000 dollars to distribute it in the prizes that bear his name. Thus, in 1901 the Nobel Prize was awarded to the Swedish Academy, and today they are the most valued prizes in the world of science.
Mr. Kavli has not worked with the explosives, but he has made a great fortune. Born in Norway, it has been enriched in the US through a company of sensors for aircraft and spacecraft. It seems that it has seemed a good idea to act as the neighboring Nobel and, like him, it has occurred to him to reward those who progress in science. Of course, Kavli is a man of his time; times have changed and science too. For this reason, he highlighted current issues such as nanotechnology, astrophysics and neuroscience.
It cannot be denied that in these three areas there have been important advances in recent times and it is clear that in the future they will continue to have a decisive importance. Therefore, in this sense, the Kavli cannot be excused. In any case, he may be accused that mathematics has been relegated, but as people realized it long ago, there is already more than one prize to recognize the best mathematicians.
The smallest, largest and most complex
The Kavli awards will be presented every two years in Norway. The first ones will be given in 2008, so there is enough time to place bets and quinielas. And so that whoever wants to get the prize can continue competing! In addition, it will have to be through work, because if the judge wants to buy it, it will not go cheap, since among many researchers will decide who is the winner.
With these awards, Kavli has two objectives: on the one hand, to honor and help scientists who have contributed their contributions in these fields of science, and on the other, to stimulate scientific issues in society. Let street people talk about science and get closer to that world. In this way, everyone will win: society will understand how important it is and, incidentally, realize that it is necessary to put money to investigate. For everyone.
However, the award ceremony is not the only work of the foundation created by Kavli. In 2000, Kavli sold his company and set up a foundation with that money in California. Since then, ten research institutes have been opened with their name in prestigious universities: In California, Stanford University, Chicago, MIT, Yalen, Columbia, Cornell University... And they don't have it all: one of them, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2004 has moved to the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics.
Kavli himself recognizes that he has always had an interest in science, for example, in his hometown, when he was young, he was skiing to see the northern lights. The dance of the lights of heaven raised questions about the measure of the universe and of man. In this sense, the prizes he has created will take into account the smallest of the universe (nanotechnology), the largest (astrophysics) and the most complex (brain).
Other awards
We don't know if the Kavli awards will become as popular as the Novels. However, the Novels are not the only prizes awarded in the scientific field, but are well known, for example, the Nobel Prize winners Ig. In them absurd investigations and those that should not be repeated are awarded annually.
The funny thing will be the Matusal mouse prize. It is given to those who get a mouse to stay alive for a long time, and do not think it is a humble prize. The mouse pattern earns a million dollars like the one that receives a Kavli. The mouse of the last winner was five years old, that is, 190 years put in the man. If that is rewarding… The case is that the sick mouse died in 2003 and since then there are several candidates in competition. The truth is that the Kavli awards make me much more curious than those of Matusal. We will have to wait until 2008 to find out who the first winners are and why they have won.
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