Date: 11 November 1999
Place of Ceremony: Main Building
Host Institution: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Host Country: Trondheim, Norway
The World Cultural Council presented the 1999 Albert Einstein World Award of Science to Prof. Robert Weinberg, Professor of Biology, from the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA.
The Official Award Ceremony took place in Trondheim, Norway, the host being the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, on November the 11th, 1999. The Rector, Prof. Emil Spjotvoll, and the President of the World Cultural Council, Rafael Estrada, presented the awards.
This recognition was granted by the members of the Interdisciplinary Committee of the World Cultural Council to Prof. Weinberg for his valuable and diverse contributions in the field of Biomedical Sciences, and in particular for his productive work on the genetic and molecular basis of neo-plastic disease.
On receiving the award Prof. Weinberg said:
“I am particularly flattered to have been singled out for the Einstein Award. This is an extraordinary honour and I follow here in the footsteps of previous awardees for whom I have enormous respect and regard. I can only express my deep appreciation for this honour to the selection Committee.”
The Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts was conferred to Prof. Magdalena Abakanowicz, painter, sculptor and textile artist whose creativity is directed towards the human being.
She was selected as the winner of this award in recognition for her creative and innovative work in the field of contemporary art. She has held over a hundred single-artist exhibitions in museums and galleries in Europe, America, Australia and Japan, mounting each one by herself as a separate work of art. In 1991 she created Arboreal Architecture, her concept of an ecological city.
“Thank you very much for this award. I feel deeply honoured, and I also feel extremely glad that it has happened in Norway, the country that first showed my work to the world in a single-artist exhibition. I would like to say that Art is mankind’s most harmless activity… and it will remain mankind’s most astonishing activity… Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of its existence; it opens our eyes to see, and our brain to imagine…”
– Prof. Abakanowicz.
