Marcel Grossmann Awards
(Press Release)
The Marcel Grossmann Meetings currently organized by ICRANet in collaboration with ICTP and UNESCO were founded in 1975 by Remo Ruffini and Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, the founder of ICTP. Their aim was to review developments in gravitation and general relativity with major emphasis on mathematical foundations and physical and astrophysical predictions. The dedication to Marcel Grossmann celebrates the merging of the mathematical ideas of Ricci and Levi Civita with the physics world, made possible by the genius of Albert Einstein in the framing of the theory of general relativity.
For the fourth such meeting MG4, the idea of an exchange between art and science was incorporated into the theme, initiated with the creation of the TEST sculpture by the Italian artist Attilio Pierelli which was inspired and guided by the mathematical trajectories of particles in motion around a rotating Kerr black hole. This artist side of the meeting was followed with the creation of additional works of art, including for example, an electronic music composition by Federico Amendola based on the repetitive signal emitted by a binary pulsar composed for and performed at MG5. This tradition is continued in this MG12 in Paris by the presentation of the sculpture La Madre Terra (Mother Earth) by Pietro Cascella conceived for the ICRANet centers of Pescara and Villa Ratti in Nice. This statue is currently being exhibited at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
The pure silver TEST sculpture has remained a constant feature of the MG Meetings through the Marcel Grossmann Awards, which since MG4 have been awarded to institutions and individuals who have played a key role in the advancement of gravitational physics and geometry. The elegantly beautiful TEST sculpture is a concrete symbol of the award, the first copy of which was presented to Pope John Paul II at MG4 and subsequent copies to each recipient of the award, including Abdus Salam, John Wheeler, Stephen Hawking, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Tullio Regge, Roger Penrose and Roy Kerr, among others.
The Marcel Grossmann Awards Ceremony at MG12 in Paris on its opening plenary session Monday, July 12, 2009 will be honored by the presence of international public personalities. The Marcel Grossmann Awards will be given to the following institution and individuals:
Institutional Award
Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique (IHES)
for its outstanding contributions to mathematics and theoretical physics, and notably for having renewed basic geometrical concepts,
and having developed new mathematical and physical aspects of spacetime.
- presented to Prof. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon
Individual Award
Jaan Einasto
for pioneering contributions in the discovery of dark matter and the cosmic web and for fostering research in the historic Tartu Observatory.
Christine Jones
for her fundamental contributions to the X-ray studies of galaxies and clusters tracing their formation and evolution and for her role in
collaborations using clusters to study dark matter and in analyzing the effects of outbursts from supermassive black holes on the intracluster gas.
Michael Kramer
for his fundamental contributions to pulsar astrophysics, and notably for having first confirmed the existence of spin-orbit precession in binary pulsars.
