Indian economist wins Balzan Prize for study on women in agriculture
MILAN: Two US scientists, whose work has contributed to creating immunological treatments for cancer, and an Indian economist are among the winners of this year’s Balzan Prize that recognise scholarly and scientific achievements.
Indian economist Bina Agarwal, a professor at the University of Manchester, was recognised in the gender studies category for her “heroic” work studying women’s contributions to agriculture in India.
James Allison of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Robert Schreiber of the Washington University School of Medicine were cited for their work on antibody treatments that has increased the survival of patients with metastatic melanoma.
Belgian astrophysicist Michael Gillon was awarded for his work that has helped map new solar systems from Earth, using robotic telescopes instead of much more costly satellites.
Germans Aleida and Jan Assmann, a married couple was recognised for their work presenting collective memory “as a requirement for the formation of the identity of religious and political communities.”
The Balzan Foundation awards two prizes in the sciences and two in the humanities each year. Recipients receive 750,000 Swiss francs ($790,000), half of which must be used for research, preferably by young scholars or scientists.