Atoms for Peace Award
The Atoms for Peace Award is a prize given to promote the development and peaceful use of atomic energy. The name and origin of the award go back to the Atoms for Peace speech given by American President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the United Nations on December 8, 1953 in New York City .
In a speech given in Geneva on July 20, 1955, he again stimulated international efforts to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and expressed his hope that the private sector would, among other things, win a prize for promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy for the general benefit of Would establish humanity. This idea was developed by Henry Ford II , Benson Ford and Henry Clay Ford picked that for outstanding contributions to the peaceful application of nuclear energy ( outstanding contributions to the peaceful application of nuclear energy ) over a period of ten years from the foundation of the Ford Motor Company , a Made available prize money totaling USD 1,000,000.00 in ten parts of USD 100,000.00 each. An independent nonprofit organization was formed as "Atoms for Peace Awards Inc., A Memorial to Henry Ford and Edsel Ford" to administer and award the prize money. The award was announced on August 8, 1955 by Admiral Lewis L. Strauss , chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission , at the first Geneva nuclear conference .
The award and planning committee was chaired by James Rhyne Killian , President of MIT , with six other members (trustees) at his side. At the suggestion of organizations or individuals, the committee selected the award winner (s) regardless of the nationality or political attitude of the person to be honored. The proposals were not limited to scientists and engineers, but were intended to generally designate those people who, in the opinion of the award committee, had made the greatest contribution to the peaceful use of nuclear energy in the period under review. If the committee was unable to agree on one or more award winners in a year, the award was suspended for that year and also took place in a subsequent year. The award committee was supported by an advisory committee set up by it, which was able to make a preselection from the proposals received from one year and then passed it on to the award committee, which was responsible for the final decision.
The prize consisted of the sum of money - if necessary also divided among several winners - and a personal representative commemorative medal. The first award ceremony took place on October 24, 1957 in the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC to Niels Bohr .
The 22 award winners were:
- Oct. 24, 1957 - Niels Bohr
- Jan. 29, 1959 - George C. de Hevesy
- May 18, 1960 - Leó Szilárd and Eugene Paul Wigner
- May 18, 1960 - Alvin M. Weinberg and Walter Henry Zinn
- Apr. 06 , 1961 - Sir John Cockcroft
- Oct. 24, 1963 - Edwin M. McMillan and Vladimir I. Weksler
- Nov. 14, 1967 - Isidor I. Rabi , Wilfrid Bennett Lewis and Bertrand L. Goldschmidt
- Oct. 14, 1968 - Sigvard Eklund , Abdus Salam and Henry De Wolf Smyth
- May 14, 1969 - Aage N. Bohr , Ben Roy Mottelson , Floyd Leroy Culler, Jr. , Henry Seymour Kaplan , Anthony Leonid Turkevich and Compton Alexander Rennie
- May 14, 1969 - Dwight D. Eisenhower (Posthumous)
Voice of America and the public radio station WGBH in Boston made tape recordings of the individual award ceremonies , which together with the correspondence of the award committee, nomination proposals, organizational documents, speech protocols and press releases on the respective award ceremonies as well as biographical information on the awardees on behalf of the chairman of the Awards Committee have been deposited in the library archives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Quotes
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“ That private business and professional men throughout the world will take an interest and provide an incentive in finding new ways that this new science can be used. . . for the benefit of mankind and not destruction. "
- according to documents in the MIT archive, p. 2
Individual evidence
- ↑ Atoms for Peace Award , article in Science and Technology , Spring 2004, on findarticles.com, viewed December 2, 2009
- ↑ Documents on the award and its award in the MIT archive, on libraries.mit.edu, viewed December 2, 2009 (PDF, English; 50 kB)
- ↑ Announcement ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the presentation of the Atoms for Peace Award 1968 at the International Atomic Energy Agency , on iaea.org, viewed December 2, 2009 (PDF, English; 50 kB)
