has won the Wolf Prize for the Arts in 2005. The Wolf Prize rotates annually among architecture, music, painting, and sculpture. l JPost l
Jerusalem Post

Jan. 25, 2005 18:43 | Updated Jan. 25, 2005 18:55

2005 Wolf Prizes announced

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

An American will receive the 2005 Wolf Prize for Chemistry and a Frenchmen will receive the Wolf Prize for Architecture in a Knesset ceremony in May.

Education and Culture Minister Limor Livnat, who chairs the Wolf Foundation Council, announced on Tuesday that the $100,000 chemistry prize will go to Prof. Richard N. Zare of Stanford University "for his ingenious applications of laser techniques for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules and their use in analytical chemistry.

In making seminal contributions to the theory and practice of both physical and analytical chemistry, he has profoundly influenced developments in these two areas of science. In addition to his eminent contributions, he has worked relentlessly and successfully for chemistry in the national as well as international arena. He is an outstanding spokesman for science," the jury stated.

Zare, 65, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, moved to Columbia University to teach and conduct research and has been associated with Stanford since 1977. "His research also initiated the development of a series of novel techniques in applied physical chemistry, that subsequently became indispensable to progress in chemical and biochemical analysis, particularly in relation to detection at the single-molecule, area-selective, and sub-cellular levels," it was stated.

Jean Nouvel will receive the $100,000 architecture prize "for providing a new model of contextualism and redefining the dialectic between the two salient characteristics of contemporary architecture: concreteness and ephemerality," the international jury said.

Born in France in 1945, Nouvel was said to use "the richest of palettes available to the contemporary architect. In each of his proposals and works, the result is exceptional. Nouvel does not impose a priori forms or materials.

For him, architectural form follows neither from the architect's vocabulary, nor from a predictable response to context. Rather, the proposed and the pre-existing, interact to produce a result characterized by new material assemblages," stated the jury in this field.

A graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Nouvel became the vice-president of the Institut Francais d'Architecture in 1991. Among his most renowned buildings are the Music and Conference Center in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Arab World Institute, and the Cartier Foundation Building in Paris, and the Opera House in Lyon. "He demonstrates the distinctive capacity of architecture to test and sustain technological advancements in spatial and material terms.

Experimental engineering and inventive methods of assembly are combined to produce a three-dimensional reality that shares an affinity with virtual imaginary," it was stated.

The Israel-based Wolf Foundation was established by the late German-born inventor, diplomat and philanthropist, Dr. Ricardo Wolf. To date, a total of 224 scientists and artists from 21 countries have been honored.