Contact: Jill Shea
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For Immediate Release:
2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 50 RECOGNIZES WIDE-RANGING
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTIONS
BY INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS
List Honors Achievements In Internet Technology, Stem Cell Research, Flu Preparedness, Climatology and Other Fields Critical This Past Year
Diverse Honorees Include Google, Noted Korean Stem Cell Researcher Woo Suk Hwang, Entrepreneur/Philanthropist Fred Kavli, Among Many Others.
New York, Nov. 7, 2005 – The world’s largest, most innovative internet search engine; a world-renowned researcher who cloned stem cells from adults and also created the first cloned dog; the creators of a skin patch that may eventually deliver flu vaccine; and a developer of synthetic DNA are among the varied list of individuals and organizations whose contributions to science and technology are recognized by the 2005 Scientific American 50.
The prestigious list is featured in the December edition of Scientific American, the nation’s premier science magazine. The issue hits newsstands on November 22 and may be accessed on the magazine’s website at www.sciam.com.
Selected by the magazine’s Board of Editors with the help of distinguished outside advisors, the Scientific American 50 honors research, business and policy leaders in an array of fields whose work has facilitated science and technology advances that are helping produce a better future. Topping the list are three honoree distinctions: “Research Leader of the Year,” “Business Leader of the Year” and “Policy Leader of the Year.” Recognized in the top three spots are:
• Google, Inc., Mountain View, CA.-- Business Leader of the Year. The Web’s leader in Internet search technology, founded by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, continues to introduce groundbreaking innovations. Recent advances include Google Earth, which not only finds routes and addresses, but provides users with satellite views of geographical landscapes. Coming soon: Google Video, enabling users to search for videos from selected channels.
• Fred Kavli, Founder, Kavli Foundation, Santa Barbara, CA. Policy Leader of the Year –The Finnish-born engineer sold his Kavlico Corporation, one of the world’s largest sensor manufacturers, and established the Kavli Foundation, dedicated to important and generally under-funded basic research. With assets of $99.5 million, Kavli has created basic science research institutes at 10 universities. In 2004 three of eight Nobel Prizes went to scientists affiliated with his institutes.
• Woo Suk Hwang, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Research Leader of the Year –In February of 2004 Hwang and his research team reported the first embryonic stem cell line derived from a cloned human embryo. Early this year they created 11 stem cell lines, each one the perfect genetic match of a different patient. In August 2005, they introduced the first cloned dog to the world.
“The Scientific American 50 is organized in a different way this year,” said Scientific American Editor-in-Chief John Rennie. “As in the past, the 2005 Scientific American 50 recognizes research, business and policy leaders whose contributions to science and technology are improving society. Now, for the first time, we’re identifying those leaders in the context of the larger trends that made those advances so highly significant this year.”
Science and technology trends highlighted by this year’s Scientific American 50 include Stem Cells, Flu Preparedness, Artificial Life, Nanotubes, Gene Therapy, and Internet Search, among others.
In addition to the top three honorees, the following are other research, business and policy leaders whose work is recognized by this year’s Scientific American 50. (Science and technology trends identified by the magazine are underlined):
• Robert Klein, real estate developer and chairman of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Emeryville, CA, -- named Policy Leader for spearheading Proposition 71, the ballot initiative that helped make California the world’s single largest source of funding for Stem Cell Research.
• Iomai Corporation, Gaithersburg, MD. -- named Business Leader for advancing the trend towards greater Flu Preparedness through development of a skin patch that may one day replace flu shots, improving delivery of flu vaccine.
• Robert G. Webster, St. Jude’s Hospital, Memphis Tenn. – named Policy Leader for his research leading to a better understanding of the threat of avian flu, and for guiding reform of Hong Kong’s live-animal markets to help the territory avoid a large scale avian flu pandemic.
• Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) – honored as Policy Leaders advancing Open Internet Access by introducing the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act to give Americans greater control over their personal information.
• Zheng-Yi Chen of Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA) and Yehoash Raphael of the University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, MI) -- named Research Leaders for demonstrating that Gene Therapy can also treat chronic conditions such as hearing loss, in addition to its traditional applications.
• George Church of Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA) – named Research Leader for advancing the field of Artificial Life through creation of a new method of making synthetic DNA, giving scientists the power to create genes that never before existed.
• Mark T. Keating of Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA) – named Research Leader for his success using Biomedical Engineering to enable adult mammal heart muscle cells to multiply, a first step on the road to new heart-repair therapies.
• Bradley Hyman of Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA) – named Research Leader for developing early Brain Scanning tools helping to pinpoint the presence of Alzheimer’s disease. • MyPublicInfo, Inc. (MPI Arlington, VA) – named Business Leader for providing a web-based service to allow citizens to view complete contents of public records attached to their identity. MPI provides a much broader and more secure dossier of information than had been previously available, dramatically increasing Open Internet Access.
• Carl Stevenson, Chairman of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Working Group on Wireless Regional Area Networks (New York, NY) – named Policy Leader for bringing Super WiFi closer to commercialization through development of standards for wireless interoperability in ultra-high frequency (UHF) channels.
• Treatment Action Campaign (Muizenberg, South Africa) – named Policy Leader for motivating the South African government and pharmaceutical companies to make HIV Treatments more accessible to millions of South African patients.
• The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative formed by the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont to sidestep federal opposition to the Kyoto Protocol with a preliminary agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10% by 2020 - named a Policy Leader for Climate Change.
• Airbus (Toulouse, France) – named Business Leader in Mega Jumbo Jets for building the energy-saving Airbus A380, which carries more passengers and burns less fuel than the Boeing 747.
• James Jaskie of Motorola Physical Sciences Research Laboratory (Tempe, AZ) – named Business Leader for unveiling a prototype high-definition television screen that replaces the cathode ray tube with a glass panel coated with Nanotubes.
• Haisheng Rong of Intel Corporation (Santa Clara, CA) – named Business Leader for developing continuous-output Silicon Lasers that may someday lead to high-speed optical connections for computers.
• The U.S. Green Buildings Council (USGBC; Washington, DC); architects Fox & Fowle (New York, NY); William McDonough & Partners (Charlottesville, VA) and Foster and Partners (London, UK) are recognized as Business Leaders for demonstrating that innovative Green Architecture can also be profitable.
The complete Scientific American 50 begins on page 47 of the December issue.
Past Scientific American 50 winners have spotlighted visionaries from an array of fields. Prior honorees have included stem cell researcher Douglas A. Melton, Professor of the National Sciences at Harvard (2004 Policy Leader of the Year); Nobel prize-winning neurobiologist Roderick MacKinnon, Professor of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics of Rockefeller University (2003 Research Leader of the Year); aviation leader Burt Rutan, President, Scaled Composites (2003 Aerospace/Business Leader): global public health leader Gro Harlem Brundtland, former World Health Organization Secretary General (2003 Policy Leader of the Year); corporate chief Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO, General Electric Company (2002 General Technology/Business Leader); and high tech innovator Steven Jobs, CEO, Apple (2002 Communications/Business Leader).
Founded in 1845, editorial contributors to Scientific American, the nation’s premier magazine devoted to science and technology, have included over 100 Nobel laureates, among them Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Francis Crick, Stanley Prusiner and Harold Varmus.
Scientific American, Inc. is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, a U.S. subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a privately held international media corporation operating in more than 40 countries. In addition to Scientific American, Holtzbrinck Publishers includes the book publishing houses Farrar, Straus & Giroux; W.H. Freeman; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin’s Press and Tor; the academic scholarly publishing company Palgrave U.S.; the College Publishing Group of Bedford Freeman Worth; and the distribution company VHPS.
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