The Kyoto Prize winners this year include material scientists pioneer John Cahn, now an emeritus Fellow at the U.S. National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST). Cahn's numerous contributions to the science of metallurgical alloys--including the co-authorship of the seminal paper explaining quasicrysals--are widely used in semiconductors, robotics, medicine and transportation. The other two Kyoto Prize Laureates for 2011 include the winner in Basic Sciences, Rashid Sunyaev, a Russian astrophysicist with co-citizenship in Germany, who proposed the theory that fluctuations in cosmic microwave background radiation could be used to look back into time at the origins or our expanding universe. And in Arts and Philiosophy, this year's Kyoto Prize Laureate is Tamasaburo Bando V, a Japanese theater performer and Kabuki actor specializing in female roles, who has become world renowned a creator of elegant beauty that has influence many artistic genres. The Kyoto Prize Laureate will be officially honored in Japan on Nov. 9th, each receiving a 20-karat-gold medallion and $625,000. The ceremony and gala will be repeated in the U.S. in San Diego. Calif. on March 20-22, 2012.
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