Balzan prizes honour sciences and culture
This year’s prestigious Balzan prizes are to go to an Italian historian, a German theatre historian, a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Brazilian mathematician.
The foundation, based in Zurich and Milan, cited Carlo Ginzburg (Italy), Manfred Brauneck (Germany), Shinya Yamanaka (Japan) and Jacob Palis (Brazil).
Each will receive a prize of SFr1 million ($990,000), half of which has to be given for research work, preferably involving young scholars and researchers.
This year’s prize presentation ceremony will take place in Rome on November 19.
The aim of the foundation is to promote culture, science and world peace.
It was set up in Lugano in 1956 by Angela Lina Balzan, who had inherited her father Eugenio’s considerable estate. She destined this wealth to honour her father’s memory.
He had spent most of his working life at Milan’s leading daily paper, Corriere della Sera, gradually working his way up to become editor-in-chief and later managing director of the paper’s publishing company.
Balzan later moved to Switzerland, living in Zurich and Lugano, where he invested his fortune with success.
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