Claude Elwood Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist and cryptographer known as the "father of information theory" and as the "father of the Information Age". Shannon was the first to describe the Boolean gates that are essential to all digital electronic circuits, and also created the first machine learning device. He is credited alongside George Boole for laying the foundations of the Information Age.
Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of the Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces".
The Kyoto Prize is Japan's highest private award for lifetime achievement in the arts and sciences. It is given not only to those that are top representatives of their own respective fields, but to "those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind". The Kyoto Prize was created in collaboration with the Nobel Foundation and is regarded by many as Japan's version of the Nobel Prize, representing one of the most prestigious awards available in fields that are not traditionally honored with a Nobel.
The Rolf Schock Prizes were established and endowed by bequest of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock (1933–1986). The prizes were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1993 and, since 2005, are awarded every three years. Each recipient currently receives SEK 400,000. A similar prize is the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, established by the Inamori Foundation. It is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Philosophy.
Rudolf Emil Kálmán was a Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematician, and inventor. He is most noted for his co-invention and development of the Kalman filter, a mathematical algorithm that is widely used in signal processing, control systems, and guidance, navigation and control. For this work, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Kálmán the National Medal of Science on October 7, 2009.
George Evelyn Hutchinson was a British ecologist sometimes described as the "father of modern ecology." He contributed for more than sixty years to the fields of limnology, systems ecology, radiation ecology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, a mathematical theory of population growth, art history, philosophy, religion, and anthropology. He worked on the passage of phosphorus through lakes, the chemistry and biology of lakes, the theory of interspecific competition, and on insect taxonomy and genetics, zoo-geography, and African water bugs. He is known as one of the first to combine ecology with mathematics. He became an international expert on lakes and wrote the four-volume Treatise on Limnology in 1957.
Walter Jakob Gehring was a Swiss developmental biologist who was a professor at the Biozentrum Basel of the University of Basel, Switzerland. He obtained his PhD at the University of Zurich in 1965 and after two years as a research assistant of Ernst Hadorn he joined Alan Garen's group at Yale University in New Haven as a postdoctoral fellow.
Kazuo Inamori, was a Japanese philanthropist, entrepreneur and the founder of Kyocera and KDDI. He was the chairman of Japan Airlines.
Simon Asher Levin is an American ecologist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He specializes in using mathematical modeling and empirical studies in the understanding of macroscopic patterns of ecosystems and biological diversities.
Hirosi Ooguri is a theoretical physicist working on quantum field theory, quantum gravity, superstring theory, and their interfaces with mathematics. He is Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and the Founding Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology. He is also the director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics at the University of Tokyo and is the chair of the board of trustees of the Aspen Center for Physics in Colorado.
Graham Douglas Farquhar, is an Australian biophysicist, Distinguished Professor at Australian National University, and leader of the Farquhar Lab. In 2018 Farquhar was named Senior Australian of the Year.
The Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy is awarded once a year by the Inamori Foundation for lifetime achievements in the arts and philosophy. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology and the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences. The first Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy was awarded to Olivier Messiaen in 1985, the "greatest composer to have emerged from 20th century France". The Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in fields not traditionally honored with a Nobel Prize.
Karl Alexander Deisseroth is an American scientist. He is the D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
Yoshinori Ohsumi is a Japanese cell biologist specializing in autophagy, the process that cells use to destroy and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi is a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology's Institute of Innovative Research. He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Sciences in 2012, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.
The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded once a year by the Inamori Foundation. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. The first Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology was awarded to Rudolf E. Kálmán, the "creator of modern control and system theory". The Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in fields which are traditionally not honored with a Nobel Prize.
Kazutoshi Mori is a Japanese molecular biologist known for research on unfolded protein response. He is a professor of Biophysics at the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, and shared the 2014 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Peter Walter for discoveries concerning the unfolded protein response — an intracellular quality control system that detects harmful misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum and signals the nucleus to carry out corrective measures.
Tasuku Honjo is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). He is also known for his molecular identification of cytokines: IL-4 and IL-5, as well as the discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation.
