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.
EXPANSIONIST: China deploys an average of 40 to 50 warships and coast guard vessels daily in the South China Sea, despite pledges not to militarize the region, an official said China is attempting to expand its influence across the First Island Chain and increase pressure on Japan by sending coast guard vessels into waters off of Taiwan under the pretext of maritime negotiations with Japan and the Philippines, a national security official said yesterday. China’s recent actions in the waters east of Taiwan and Japan and the Philippines’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) are attempts to establish dominance in First Island Chain waters, said the official who declined to be named, adding that this is “expansion disguised as law enforcement.” Framing China’s actions solely as a cross-strait issue is a serious misjudgment that
Through analyzing fossil evidence, a research team at National Taiwan University (NTU) discovered the largest endemic bird to have lived in Taiwan, naming it Pavo miejue, or extinct peafowl (滅絕孔雀). The Mikado pheasant, which is printed on the back of the NT$1,000 bank note, was previously believed to be the biggest endemic bird to Taiwan. The research team’s findings suggest that Pavo miejue lived during the Pleistocene epoch tens of thousands of years ago. It is the first endemic extinct bird species discovered and formally named in Taiwan. The study was coauthored by NTU Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修),
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport is to suspend its automated Skytrain service connecting Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 starting on July 1 to facilitate connection works for the upcoming Terminal 3, the airport operator said today. Passengers and staff who need to travel between the two terminals after the suspension can instead use the Taoyuan MRT or the airport's 24-hour shuttle bus service, Taoyuan International Airport Corp said. The Taoyuan MRT Airport Line directly links the two terminals, while the shuttle buses are to operate around the clock, the company added. The Skytrain provides free transportation between the airport’s two terminals for travelers and
Taiwan ranked 42nd in terms of peacefulness among 163 countries, down five places from last year, according to this year’s Global Peace Index. With an overall score of 1.751, Taiwan dropped from 37th last year, the report published by the global Institute for Economics and Peace showed. The overall score measures a country’s level of peacefulness using 23 quantitative and qualitative indicators across three domains — ongoing domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization. While Taiwan ranked 42nd worldwide, it was listed in ninth place among the 19 Asian-Pacific countries in the report, after New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia,
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