International Balzan Foundation
 
Press release
 
The 2009 Balzan Prizewinners announced in Milan

One million Swiss Francs (around $ 940 thousand,  660 thousands) for each subject. Half of the amount must be destined to research
 

Milan, September 7, 2009 - The names of the 2009 Balzan Prize winners were announced today at 6 pm:

Terence Cave (UK), St John’s College, Oxford, for Literature since 1500
Paolo Rossi (Italy), Università di Firenze, for History of Science
Brenda Milner (Canada/UK), McGill University, for Cognitive Neuroscience
Michael Grätzel (Switzerland/Germany), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, for the Science of New Materials
The Balzan Prizes 2009 have been announced in Milan by the Chairman of the Balzan General Prize Committee, Salvatore Veca, together with the President of the Balzan  “Prize” Foundation, Ambassador Bruno Bottai, in the Corriere della Sera Foundation. 
The profiles of the winners and the motivations of the Prizes (which will be awarded by the Vice-president of the Federal Council Doris Leuthard, during a ceremony to be held in Berne on November 20 at the Chamber of the National Council) were presented by four prestigious members of the General Prize Committee:
 
Karlheinz Stierle (Professor Emeritus of Romance Literatures at the University of Constance; Member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; Corresponding Fellow of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Paris; Foreign Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome) read the motivation for the assignment of the Prize for Literature since 1500 to Terence Cave: “for his outstanding contributions to a new understanding of Renaissance literature and of the influence of Aristotelian poetics in modern European literature.”
 
Nicolette Mout (Professor of Modern History and Professor of Central European Studies at the University of Leiden; Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; Foreign Member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) read the motivation for the assignment of the Prize for the History of Science to Paolo Rossi: “for his major contributions to the study of the intellectual foundations of science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment”.

 
Lord Krebs of Wytham (Principal of Jesus College, Oxford; formerly Chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency; formerly Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, Swindon; formerly Royal Society Research Professor, University of Oxford; Fellow of the Royal Society, London) read the motivation for the assignment of the Prize for the Cognitive Neuroscience to Brenda Milner: “for her pioneering studies of the role of the hippocampus in the formation of memory and her identification of different kinds of memory system.”  

Enric Banda (Research Professor of Geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Barcelona, Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC); President of Euroscience, Strasbourg) read the motivation for the assignment of the Prize for Science of New Materials to Michael Grätzel: “for his many contributions to the Science of New Materials, and in particular for his invention and development of a new type of photovoltaic solar cell, the Dye Sensitized Cell, commonly known as the Grätzel Cell”.

The President of the General Prize Committee, Professor Salvatore Veca, announced that the 2010 Balzan Prizes will be awarded in the following fields: European History (1400-1700),  History of Theatre in all its aspects, Biology of stem-cells and their potential application, Mathematics (pure or applied).
The award fields  vary each year and can be related to either a specific or an interdisciplinary field, and look to go beyond the traditional subjects both in  the humanities (literature, the moral sciences and the arts) and in the sciences (medicine and the physical, mathematical and natural sciences), so as to give priority to innovative research.
Half of the one million Swiss Francs received by the winner of each of the four subjects must be destined for research work, preferably involving young scholars and researchers.
The public event, under the auspices of the City of Milan, was followed by a lecture by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, 1999 Balzan Prize for the Science of Human Origins, entitled “Italian Culture: a multidisciplinary history”.
 
The International Balzan Foundation, founded in 1957, operates from two different offices. The International Balzan Foundation - “Prize” (chaired in Milan by Ambassador Bruno Bottai) selects the subjects to be awarded and the candidates through its General Prize Committee. The Balzan Foundation “Fund” (chaired in Zurich by Achille Casanova) administers the estate left by Eugenio Balzan.