Dan David Foundation honors John N. Bahcall.
John N. Bahcall, a faculty member at the Institute For Advanced Study for 32 years, has been granted a $1 million award from the Dan David Foundation, an endowment administered by Tel Aviv University.
Three Dan David "Past, Present and Future Time Dimension" prizes are awarded each year for research contributing to the understanding of each of these time periods, and a portion of the awards promote continued scholarship in the winners’ fields of expertise. Professor Bahcall won the future-time dimension category for pioneering work in the development of neutrino astrophysics, or particle astrophysics, demonstrating how neutrino detectors allow a deep look inside the sun, and elaborating from this observation sophisticated theoretical models.
Born in Shreveport, La., Professor Bahcall is a Princeton University visiting lecturer with the rank of professor.
A member of the Hubble Telescope Working Group from 1973 to 1992, he has received honorary doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame and Hebrew University. He has received the Russell Prize of the American Astronomical Society, Award Medal of the University of Helsinki, the Dannie Heineman Prize of the American Institute of Physics, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal and the Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society.
A key facet of the prize is that it "pays forward," with $100,000 of each award going to scholarships for young researchers or scholars in the winners’ field of studies.
The three $1 million awards will be presented at a ceremony in May.
The prize, named after entrepreneur Dan David, is funded from a $100 million endowment administered by Tel Aviv University in Israel. Mr. David is chairman of Photo-Me International PLC, which holds about 90 percent of the worldwide market share of automatic photo booths found in malls and arcades.
In the past-time dimension category, the winner is Michel Brunet, who discovered the complete cranium of a new hominid, nicknamed Toumai, today considered the ancestor of humankind. He is a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Poitiers in France.
Sharing the award for the present-time dimension, print and electronic media category are James Nachtwey, a photojournalist who has documented war, famine, critical social issues and the plight of the disfranchised; and Frederick Wiseman, who has produced 32 documentaries and two fiction films.