President Dreifuss attends Balzan prize ceremony

Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss praised the work of four Europeans Tuesday who received SFr500,000 each during the 1999 Balzan prize award in Berne.

Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss praised the work of four Europeans Tuesday who received SFr500,000 each during the 1999 Balzan prize award in Berne.

The prize is presented annually to mark achievements in the fields of the humanities and social science, art and literature, physics, mathematics, natural science and medicine.

It’s awarded by the Swiss-Italian Balzan Foundation set up in 1956 to commemorate Eugenio Balzan, co-owner of the renowned Milan newspaper, the “Corriere della Sera”.

“This is a meeting which gives confidence in humanity, in its genius and its desire for progress,” said Dreifuss at a ceremony in the House of Representatives.

The 1999 prize winners are historian Sir John H. Elliott from Britain, philosopher Paul Ricoeur of France, Russian-French mathematician Michael L. Gromov and Italian anthropologist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

Dreifuss said she had only one regret about the Balzan Prize – only one woman had ever been a laureate.

“If women had been encouraged earlier and in more numbers to take up academic careers, they would no doubt have been more numerous in receiving prestigious prizes,” she said.

But she also criticised Switzerland, saying it could not give lessons on the subject. “In international comparison, we have on average ten percent fewer women among university professors,” she said.

She added that a recent parliament decision to put in place measures to encourage women should help balance the situation.