Two Italian academics awarded prestigious Balzan Prizes 2016

Two Italian academics were awarded the prestigious 2016 Balzan Prizes, together with a German colleague, during a two-day official ceremony taking place at the Italian presidential palace here on Thursday and Friday.

Italian Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics and senior research fellow in electrical engineering at Harvard University, was honoured the prize in applied photonics.

The jury recognized him for "his pioneering work in the quantum design of new materials with specific electronic and optical features, which led to realising a fundamentally new class of laser, the Quantum Cascade Laser."

He was also awarded for major contributions in "plasmonics and meta-materials at the forefront of photonics science and technology."

Philologist Piero Boitani from Sapienza University in Rome was conferred the comparative literature prize. He was awarded for "his extraordinary ability to represent world literature as living dialogue with the classics of antiquity, the middle age, and the modern era."

German neurobiologist Reinhard Jahn, director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, was awarded the prize in the field of molecular and cellular neurosciences, for carrying out pioneering research into signal transmission in the nervous system.

The three academics were conferred the prize by Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

The Balzan Awards are considered among the most prestigious academic awards in the world.

Each Balzan Award is worth 750,000 Swiss francs (about 742,000 U.S. dollars). The International Balzan Prize Foundation rules that half of each prize must be destined to funding research projects preferably carried out by young researchers.

The Balzan Foundation aims at promoting culture, sciences, and initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace, and fraternity.

The prize is named after Italian journalist Eugenio Balzan, who left Italy in the early 1930s in protest against the fascist regime, and moved to Switzerland where he lived for many years. The fund is administered from Zurich, and the prize foundation is based in Milan. Endit