Awards, Mar 20, 2008

The following awards have been presented for work in advocacy, fund raising, nonprofit leadership, philanthropy, and other areas:

Humanitarianism. The 2008 Charles Bronfman Prize (New York), which honors significant humanitarian efforts, has been presented to Rachel Andres, director of the Solar Cooker Project at Jewish World Watch (Encino, Calif.). The project helps women who have escaped genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan by providing them with solar-powered cooking equipment. The award, which carries a $100,000 cash prize, is bestowed upon people younger than age 50 whose “Jewish values infuse their humanitarian accomplishments and provide inspiration to the next generations.”

Research. The Dan David Foundation (Tel Aviv) has announced the recipients of its 2008 Dan David Prizes, which recognize individuals for innovative interdisciplinary research on the past, present, and future of the arts, humanities, science, and technology. Each year the foundation chooses a field within each of the three time periods; this year’s selections are literature, theater, and film (past), social responsibility with emphasis on the environment (present), and the field of geosciences (future). Each prize carries a $1-million cash award, of which $300,000 goes to support scholarships for young researchers in the winner’s field. The recipients:

— Past. Amos Oz, Tom Stoppard, and Atom Egoyan shared the prize. Mr. Oz, an Israeli writer, has published award-winning novels, short stories, and books of poetry about historical events for 50 years. Mr. Stoppard, a British playwright, was recognized for his plays’ treatment of the past as well as for their humor and humanity. Mr. Egoyan is a Canadian-Armenian film maker whose 1997 movie The Sweet Hereafter earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

— Present. Former vice president Al Gore won the prize for his efforts to raise awareness of global energy consumption and its impact on the environment, which received worldwide attention through the 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth.

— Future. Geoffrey Eglinton, a professor of earth sciences at the U. of Bristol (England), was honored for his research on the molecular processes that affect sedimentary organic matter, and Ellen Moseley-Thompson and Lonnie G. Thompson, respectively professors of geography and geological sciences at Ohio State U. (Columbus), were recognized for their scientific research on the geological and environmental records stored in high-altitude ice cores.

Religion. The John Templeton Foundation (West Conshohocken, Pa.) has presented its 2008 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities to the Rev. Michal Heller, a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology (Kraków, Poland). The award includes a cash prize of £820,000, or more than $1.6-million. Fr. Heller is a cosmologist and physicist as well as a Catholic priest who established himself as a scholar during Poland’s Communist regime. He has written more than 30 books and almost 400 papers in the fields of cosmology, physics, philosophy, and the history of science, often focused on questions of the origins of the universe.