This year’s Tang Prize laureates have given a series of lectures at an event held in Taipei Saturday. The event is part of the Tang Prize Week, a week of events from September 22-28 that showcase the achievements of this year’s winners.
The biennial Tang Prize was founded in 2012 by Taiwanese entrepreneur Samuel Yin as a complement to the Nobel Prize. The prizes were first awarded in 2014. The prize recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Sinology, and rule of law.
Two winners of this year’s prize, Arthur Rosenfeld and William Theodore de Bary, have been unable to accept the prize in person because of their age. Representatives sent to receive the awards on their behalf also spoke in their place during the day-long lecture series.
The winner in sustainable development this year is American Arthur Rosenfeld, dubbed the “godfather of energy efficiency”. The award for biopharmaceutical science goes to Emmanuelle Charpentier of France, Jennifer A. Doudna of the US, and Feng Zhang of China. The three are recognized for their contributions to the genome editing platform CRISP/Cas9.
William Theodore de Bary, a heavyweight in the field of Confucian studies, has been awarded this year’s prize for sinology. And Canadian jurist Louise Arbour has won the prize for rule of law for her contributions to international criminal justice and the protection of human rights. The Tang Prize Award Ceremony is scheduled for Sunday.