KYOTO -- A Swiss scientist, a Japanese mathematician, and an American artist were awarded the 1998 Kyoto Prizes Tuesday at a special ceremony in Kyoto.
Sponsored by the Inamori Foundation, the annual Kyoto Prizes are awarded to select candidates in three separate fields: Advanced Technology, Basic Sciences, and Creative Arts and Moral Sciences.
Kurt Wuthrich, a biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology who developed a new method for determining the conformations of proteins, is this year's winner for advanced technology.
The prize for basic sciences this year went to Kiyoshi Ito, a mathematician and professor emeritus at Kyoto University who has contributed not only to mathematics theory but also physics, engineering and biology.
Nam June Paik, a South Korean-born American citizen who pioneered media art forms, was the recipient of the creative arts and moral sciences prize.
Each winner received a gold medal and 50 million yen in prize money.