2020 Wolf Prize were announced

The names of the 2020 Wolf Prize for Science and Art laureates were announced this morning at the presidential residence in the presence of Israel President, Mr. Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, Minister of Education, Rabi Rafi Peretz and Prof. Dan Shechtman, Council Acting Chairperson.

This year will mark the 42nd year in which the Wolf Prize is awarded by the Wolf Foundation. The 2020 prizes will be awarded to nine laureates from six countries (USA, England, France, Russia, Spain and Israel)

 

2020 Wolf Prize in Art will be awarded to Cindy Sherman (USA) for redefine the concept of art made with a camera.

 

2020 Wolf Prize in Agriculture will be awarded to Prof. Caroline Dean (John Innes Centre, England) for pioneering discoveries in flowering time control and epigenetic basis of vernalization.

 

2020 Wolf Prize in  Physics will be jointly awarded to three laureates: Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (Spain/ MIT, USA) Prof. Allan H. Macdonald (The University of Texas at Austin, USA) and Dr. Rafi Bistritzer (Applied Materials, Israel), for their pioneering theoretical and experimental work on twisted bilayer graphene.

 

2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine will be jointly awarded to two laureates: Prof. Jennifer Doudna (University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck, France).

 

2020 Wolf Prize in Mathematics will be jointly awarded to two laureates: Prof. Yakov Eliashberg (Stanford University) and Prof. Simon Donaldson (Stony Brook University in Long Island, NY and Imperial College London, England) for their contribution to differential geometry and topology.

 

The Awarding Ceremony will take place on June 11th in Jerusalem. The Wolf Awards will be presented by the President of the State of Israel, H.E. Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin and by the Chairman of the Wolf Foundation.

Congatulations to 2017 Wolf Prize Laureates: Professors Mayor & Queloz for winning the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics

Prof. Queloz and Prof. Mayor won both prizes “for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star”.             

 

In October 1995, Mayor and Queloz made the first discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun (an exoplanet). Using custom-made instruments on the Haute-Provence Observatory in France, the pair detected a tiny wobbling motion of a star 50 light-years away. This wobble is caused by the close orbiting of a gas-giant planet called 51 Pegasi b, which is about half the mass of Jupiter. As well as being the first-ever sighting of an exoplanet, the discovery signalled a major shift in our understanding of planet formation and evolution because the distance between 51 Pegasi b and its Sun-like star is just 5% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. This is very unlike the much larger orbits of gas giants in the Solar System.

This discovery opened the floodgates for subsequent observations revealing an incredible diversity of exoplanets. Today, science recognizes thousands of planets in distant solar systems and other planets are discovered almost every day. Many of the planets discovered so far have been found using the method of Mayor and Queloz. The discovery of Mayor and Queloz not only paved the way for the identification of many planets in other solar systems, but also for a better understanding of the formation of planets and solar systems in general.

 

The Wolf Foundation congratulates Prof. Michael Mayor & Prof. Didier Queloz for their achievements and for the pioneering and influential work, and is proud to continue recognizing ground-breaking scientists and artists around the world.