Scientists celebrate 30 years of prestigious award
The Weizmann Prize for Biochemistry is awarded annually to the best final year undergraduate in Biochemistry at the University. It is named in honour of Dr Chaim Weizmann, a former Manchester academic known as "the father of industrial fermentation".
(Media-Newswire.com) - Former winners of the Weizmann Prize for Biochemistry are gathering for a reunion at The University of Manchester to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the prestigious award. The Weizmann Prize for Biochemistry is awarded annually to the best final year undergraduate in Biochemistry at the University. It is named in honour of Dr Chaim Weizmann, a former Manchester academic known as “the father of industrial fermentation”.
Dr Weizmann was a Reader in Chemistry at Manchester when he became famous for discovering how to use bacterial fermentation to produce large quantities of organic chemicals, including acetone that was used in the manufacture of cordite explosive propellants critical to the Allied war effort.
Weizmann later became the founder of the state of Israel. He was elected as its first President on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952.
Chaim Weizmann also founded the Daniel Sieff Research Institute in Israel, since renamed the Weizmann Institute of Science, now one of the world’s top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. The Weizmann Institute has 2,600 students and staff and awards MSc and PhD degrees in mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biological chemistry and biology, as well as several interdisciplinary programmes and youth programmes. Last month Professor Ada Yonath was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her research into ribosomes – “the cell’s protein factories” – at its Structural Biology Department. Previously Professor Yonath has won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry, while her colleagues Leo Sachs, Meir Wilchek, Michael Sela and Ruth Arnon have won the Wolf Prize in Medicine and Amir Pnueli and Adi Shamir have won the Turing Award.
Former Weizmann Prize winner, now Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, Professor Martin Humphries said: “We are very proud to mark 30 years of such an important award. I was honoured to win the award back in 1980, and as a consequence I have always felt a direct association with Chaim Weizmann. I want to thank Weizmann UK for their continued support of our undergraduate programme.
“I am particularly pleased that the Faculty of Life Sciences has now developed a number of strong research links with scientists at the Weizmann Institute, and I hope these links will expand and flourish. The Weizmann's commitment to scientific excellence and its well-earned successes make it a valued partner.”
Professor Humphries will be joined by 13 other former Weizmann Prize winners from across the world including leading neuroscientist Professor Michael Hutton, who will give a lecture on his research into the causes of frontotemporal dementia ( FTD ). They will also include the very first winners of the award, Dr Ali Raza ( now President of YM Biosciences in Canada ) and Dr Eamonn Connolly ( Senior Vice President for Research of BioGaia in Sweden ).
The award winners will be joined by the President of the Weizmann Institute Professor Daniel Zajfman. He said: “When Dr Chaim Weizmann arrived in Manchester in the summer of 1904, he was a young scientist, not yet 30 years old. Here he embarked upon the scientific career that would lead him to important discoveries and culminate in establishing the Weizmann Institute of Science. So it is fitting that the Weizmann Prize encourages young scientists at the start of their own quest for insight and impact. I am looking forward to meeting the prizewinners and finding out where their quest has taken them.”
Notes for editors Photographs of the event are available in jpeg format.
For images or more information contact
Mikaela Sitford
Media Officer
Faculty of Life Sciences
The University of Manchester
Tel: 0161 275 2111
Email: Mikaela.Sitford@manchester.ac.uk
For further information about Weizmann UK contact
Ms Sheridan Gould
Executive Director
Weizmann UK
Tel: 0207 424 6860
Email: Sheridan@weizmann.org.uk
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