Hasta La Ideas

Dr. Samuel Yin is a Taiwanese entrepreneur who recently founded the Tang Prize, a Nobel-like honor intended to reward research scholars from anywhere in the world. It being a relatively new award, Yin needed an impressive medal to embody it and held a global competition for its design.

The winner was announced yesterday, and it was none other than Naoto Fukasawa who snagged top prize for designing the top prize. Fukasawa netted US $500,000 for his design, a sweet, pure gold spiral to be manufactured by Taiwan’s Central Mint. (The runners-up didn’t do too shabbily either—the other nine designers to crack the top ten will each get 50 large for their troubles!)

Fukasawa, of course, is no stranger to golden awards—it’s just that he’s usually the guy winning them, from America’s IDEA Gold Award to Germany’s iF Gold Award.

As for who will win the Fukasawa-designed award in future, attaining the Tang Prize is a tall order likely to find its way only around the necks of the world’s best and brightest. Here’s the detailed description:

In the advent of industrialization and globalization, humanity has greatly enjoyed the convenience brought about by science and technology, reaping unprecedented benefits made possible by progress and development. Yet, in the meantime, humanity also faces a multitude of critical environmental, socio-cultural, and ethical issues on an unparalleled scale, such as climate change, inequality, and moral degradation. Against this backdrop, Dr. Samuel Yin established the Tang Prize in December 2012 to encourage individuals across the globe to chart the middle path to achieving sustainable development by recognizing and supporting scholars for conducting revolutionary research in the four major fields of Sustainable Development, Biopharmaceutical Science, Sinology, and the Rule of Law. The Tang Prize is truly global in reach, with laureates selected on the basis of the originality of their research along with their contributions to society irrespective of their nationality or ethnicity.

Rooted in the long-standing cultural traditions of Chinese philosophical thinking and in an outlook of convergence and mutual enrichment with other traditions, the Tang Prize aims to provide fresh impetus to the promotion of first-class research and development in the 21st century. Implemented with self-effacement and selflessness, the Tang Prize seeks to bring about positive changes to the global community and to create a brighter future for all humanity.

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