King Faisal International prizes awarded

Dubai: Three American scientists and two Egyptian computer scientists and two Saudis, one scholar and another prominent philanthropist won King Faisal International Prize for this year for their research, religious and social studies and service to Islam.

Saudi Crown prince, Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz will be awarding the King Faisal International Prize in the five categories in a royal ceremony in Riyadh on Tuesday evening.

Shaikh Sulaiman Al Rajhi will be commended for his outstanding work with the King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam, a statement from King Faisal Foundation said.

Among the several achievements of the Al Rajhi, a philanthropist, endowing more than 50 per cent of his wealth for humanitarian purposes and establishing a special foundation to monitor this endowment, maintain it and ensure it is spent on the intended recipients; contributing regularly towards humanitarian efforts to fight poverty; encouraging Quranic memorisation groups and provide them with financial support and prizes; building mosques and establishing non-profit colleges as a nucleus for a university soon to be announced.

Also, during the ceremony, Biology Professor Alexander Varshavsky from the California Institute of Technology will be honoured with the Science Prize for his pioneering work in cell biology which is helping the treatment of cancer, the statement added.

The two American professors Richard Berkowitz and James Bussel will be receiving the medicine prize for their research in the life-threatening conditions in unborn and new born infants.

Two Egyptian computer scientists Ali Hilmi Ahmad Mousa, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, at Ain Shams University in Cairo, and Dr. Nabil Ali Mohammad, Corporate Consultant Advanced Arabic Systems, won the price for their computer searchers, while the Saudi scholar, professor Adnan Bin Mohammed Al Wazzan, former president of Umm Al Qura University in Makkah, for his study of the links between contemporary human rights and Islamic jurisprudence, a statement from King Faisal foundation said.

King Faisal Foundation was founded in 1976 in memory of Saudi Arabia's late King Faisal by his eight sons. Its awards are prestigious and they recognise exceptional achievements in Science and Medicine, in Service to Islam, Islamic Studies and Arabic Language and Literature. So far, there have been a total of 209 laureates honoured from 40 different countries including, in recent years, the UK, Germany and Italy, as well as India, Russia, Morocco, Jordan and Japan. No less than 15 award winners have gone onto to win Nobel Prizes.