Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) was on Friday awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of programmable and applied synthesis of complex oligosaccharides and glycol-proteins.
After winning the prize, Wong said it should be credited to the education he received in Taiwan and the friendly environment Academia Sinica provides for cross-field cooperation.
Wong, who returned to Taiwan from the US to serve as director of the Genomics Research Center at Academia Sinica in 2003, said the institution provides the opportunities to develop anti-bacterial and anti-cancer drugs, and many other new findings, as well as helps facilitate cooperation among scientists from various disciplines and countries.
The Wolf Prize in the sciences is considered second in importance only to the Nobel Prize. More than 30 Wolf Prize recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in scientific fields, including medicine, physics and chemistry.
The prize has been awarded since 1978 by the Wolf Foundation, which was established in 1976 by Ricardo Wolf (1887-1981), an inventor, diplomat and philanthropist, and his wife, Francisca Subirana-Wolf (1900-1981), to promote science and art for the benefit of mankind.
It is awarded annually in six areas. In science, the fields are: agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, while in the arts, the prize rotates annually among architecture, music, painting and sculpture.
The prize in each area consists of a diploma and a cash award of US$100,000.
Wong is the third Taiwan-born scientist to have won the prize since 1991, when Academia Sinica academician Yang Hsiang-fa (楊祥發) was awarded the prize in agriculture. Academia Sinica academician Yau Shing-tung (丘成桐) was awarded the 2010 Wolf Foundation Prize in mathematics.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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