(August 15, 2008)
This year The World Cultural Council will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary and Princeton University will be the host institution. The ceremony will take place on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 16.30hrs in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall, Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Prof. Ada E. Yonath The Albert Einstein World Award of Science will be presented to Prof. Ada Yonath, Professor of Structural Biology and Director of the Helen & Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly, at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel.

It is a prize that recognizes Prof Yonath´s pioneering contributions to protein biosynthesis in the field of ribosomal crystallography and her introduction of innovative techniques in cryo-bio crystallography. These innovative techniques are now used routinely in many laboratories and many scientists have based their research on her discoveries.

Her work has revolutionized the field of structural biology and has given it wide-ranging applications, particularly in the development and design of new antibiotics.

José Vasconcelos Wolrd Award of Education

Prof. William G. Bowen, President Emeritus of Princeton University and President Emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been selected as the winner of the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education 2008.

This recognition is awarded to Prof. Bowen for his lifetime’s work creating educational opportunities for those historically denied them, either because of their color, gender or socioeconomic circumstances, ensuring that American colleges incorporate the concept of equal opportunity into their selection criteria. It acknowledges his relentless efforts to achieve, as Robert Venturi put it, “the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion” in the field of education.

Prof. Bowen has also greatly contributed to American higher education, and global knowledge as a whole, by promoting the use of technology to broaden access to mankind’s intellectual and cultural inheritance.

The Albert Einstein World Award of Science was created as a means of recognition to those men and women who have accomplished scientific and technological achievements which have brought progress to science and benefit to mankind.

The distinctive characteristic of the Albert Einstein World Award of Science lies in the fact that it is granted by the Interdisciplinary Committee of the Council, which is made up of scientists highly acknowledged worldwide.

The José Vasconcelos World Award of Education has been established as an acknowledgment to those who have the all-important labor of teaching the underlying basis of our current civilization.

This prize is granted to a renowned educator, an authority in the field of teaching, or a legislator of education policies, who has had a significant influence advancing the scope of culture for mankind. The qualifying jury is comprised of several members of the Interdisciplinary Committee and a group of distinguished educators.

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