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Hauptman Woodward Medical Institute PRESS RELEASE

HWI Distinguished Herbert A. Hauptman Scientist Dr. William L. Duax Accepts
Erice Science for Peace Prize for Buffalo’s Only Nobel Laureate

HWI President Dr. Herbert Hauptman was one of six recipients of the Ettore Majorana – Erice - Science for Peace Prize conferred in Italy in late November 2009. HWI Distinguished Herbert A. Hauptman Scientist Dr. William L. Duax traveled to Rome, Italy where he accepted the prize on behalf of Hauptman. The prize included an honorarium of $75,000.

“It was an honor to accept this award on behalf of my lifelong friend, Herb, and well-deserved by our beloved Nobel Laureate,” Duax said. “It also was a pleasure to spend time with the other award winners including our long-time colleague and friend, 2009 Nobel winner Dr. Ada Yonath.”

For more than 30 years Erice, an ancient city on a mountaintop in Sicily, has been the site of hundreds of schools in which the world’s leading physicists, chemists, and biologists have devoted themselves to bringing state of the art science and technology to students from emerging nations. The Erice Prize is awarded annually to scientists who exemplify the international spirit of the Erice Institute and have taught at the schools over the years. One of the first Erice schools was organized around the methods for molecular structure determination that eventually led to Hauptman’s Nobel Prize.

The other five awardees included four other Nobel Laureates, two of whom were x-ray crystallographers, Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute, Israel) and Robert Huber (Max Plank Institute, Germany). Yonath is a particularly worthy recipient of the Science for Peace Prize. She has been one of the most prominent advocates of a major research facility being built in Jordan that will bring scientists from Israel, Egypt, Iran, and the surrounding nations to work together in harmony.

The driving force behind the Erice schools is Professor Antonino Zichichi (CERN, Geneva and U. Bologna and Centro Enrico Firmi, Italy). Zichichi played a prominent role in persuading the Catholic Church to revise its position with respect to Galleleo Gallelei. Zichichi also organized programs in Erice calling for responsible use of nuclear power. His current focus is the need for greater integration of
science and culture in the third millennium.

Zichichi brought 60 leading scientists from 30 countries to the Vatican to honor the Erice prize winners and discuss the role of science in the culture of the next one hundred years. Topics under discussion ranged from global warming and molecular medicine, to evolution and the origin of life. The two-day celebration was held at the Vatican in Rome where all attendees were housed. It was sponsored by the World Federation of Scientists, the Ettore Majorano Foundation and Center for Scientific Culture and the Pontifica Academia Scientiarum.