The award goes to Prof. Thomas Kailath for developing knowledge with a transformative impact on the information and communication technologies that permeate everyday life. These pioneering developments have served to break through the barrier of chip miniaturization, among numerous other applications.
Physicist and chemist Richard N. Zare and physicist Michael E. Fisher share the award for their independent, fundamental contributions to describing the world at the molecular scale. Their work has rendered molecules visible and allowed us to analyze their collective behavior.
Cien años de política científica en España represents a key piece in the historiographic study of the sciences in Spain, with its analysis of the long and convulsive period that was the 20th century. It conveys the main ideas and background information the reader needs to understand and appreciate the current vitality of scientific research in Spain.
The Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), the country’s leading public research organization, does not confine itself to the generation of new scientific knowledge. It also sees its task as relaying this knowledge to citizens of all ages. The CSIC en la Escuela project, targeted on the early education classroom, is about teaching children to understand the world they live in. The BBVA Foundation and CSIC advise and train teachers so they not only convey scientific facts but also how to do science, promoting a scientific culture that can serve as a bridge between the groups making up the multicultural fabric of our society.
The BBVA Foundation collaborates with the Centro de Ciencias de Benasque Pedro Pascual, an advanced research institute that organizes summer encounters for researchers from all over the world. Among the courses the Foundation will be sponsoring in 2008 are “Frontiers of Global Change” (for university students), “Quantum Physics with Non-Hermitian Operators”, “Time dependent Density-Functional Theory: Prospects and Applications” and “Modern Cosmology”.
