Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey has been awarded the 2014 Wolf Prize in chemistry. He received the prize from Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday.
The Wolf Prize is considered second in prestige following the Nobel Prize, and is awarded annually to a number of laureates in the sciences and the arts. This year, the prizes have been awarded to eight winners from four countries – the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Taiwan – for exceptional work in the fields of medicine, agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, painting, and sculpture.
Professor Wong Chi-Huey was honored this year for pioneering "the development of programmable chemical and enzymatic synthesis methods.” Wong’s breakthrough enables the previously infeasible synthesis of compounds, especially complex carbohydrates, glycoproteins and related substances. The discovery is vitally important in biology and medicine.
Wong is the first scholar based in Taiwan to receive the award in the field of chemistry. Former Academia Sinica Vice President Yang Shang-fa was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1991, while the Wolf Prize in Mathematics was bestowed upon Academician Yau Shing-tun in 2010.