The winners of the Dan David Prize were announced in the subjects: classical history, contemporary philosophy and epidemiology

Past time dimension: Prof. Sir Geoffrey Lloyd - historian • Present time dimension: Prof. Michel Serres - philosopher, • Leon Wieseltier - thinker, writer and editor • Future time dimension: Prof. Esther Duplo - economist, Prof. Alfred Sommer - Epidemiologist 

Three prizes worth one million dollars each will be awarded to the winners at a celebratory ceremony to be held on June 9, 2013 at Tel Aviv University

The Dan David International Prize publishes this morning the names of the prize winners for 2013.
The prize, which is awarded annually, for the 12th year, will distribute three prizes worth one million dollars each in the three dimensions of time: past, present and future - for extraordinary achievements that contribute to humanity, in the fields of science, spirit, art, public service and the world of business.

The prestigious Dan David Award, named after the businessman and international philanthropist Dan David who passed away two years ago, announces this morning the five recipients of the award for this year. The Dan David Prize is the only international prize given in Israel, standing in the first row of international prizes such as the Nobel Prize. The award is managed by Mrs. Smeder Fisher and the chairman of the board is the president of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Yosef Klefter. Prof. Itamar Rabinowitz serves as chairman of the Dan David Foundation.
The festive awards ceremony will be held on June 9, 2013, at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.
The award has been given since 2002 to people and institutions in the world for their contribution to society and the community, who have demonstrated special excellence and an extraordinary contribution to humanity, in the fields of science, spirit, art, public service and the world of business. Three prizes are awarded to the winners in the selected fields in the three dimensions of time: past, present and future.
The uniqueness of the award lies in the donation that the laureates make in the amount of 10% of the winning money to 20 scholarships intended for young researchers in the doctoral and post-doctoral stages in Israel and around the world.

The recipients of the 2013 Dan David Prize are:
Past time dimension - the classical culture, the modern heritage of the ancient world:

Prof. Sir Geoffrey Lloyd / Sir Geoffrey Lloyd – historian:
Prof. Sir Geoffrey Lloyd's many books placed the science of ancient Greece as a central field in the history of classical philosophy and illuminated the roots of modern science. His many publications, starting with his book (1966) "Polarity and Analogy", are cited by scholars from a wide range of contemporary fields, as well as by scholars of the classics. Recently, Lloyd has been engaged in a comparative study of Chinese and Greek science. A comparison of this kind makes a major contribution to the characterization of the modern European intellectual tradition. Prof. Sir Geoffrey Lloyd is the most important contemporary researcher in the field of the history of the science of antiquity, a field in which he has revolutionized for the past forty years. He also developed the field of the history of ideas through insights from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and general history, and initiated a research program of studies comparing the science of Greece with that of China. Lloyd revealed the vast variety of scientific methods in Greece and showed that Greek science was a product of Greek society.

Present time dimension - contemporary ideas, philosophy and intellectuals

Prof. Michel Serres / Michel Serres – philosopher
Prof. Michel Serres, one of the greatest French philosophers, has extensive knowledge of the Western tradition in philosophy and science. His research career revolved around the use of Leibniz's mathematical models, and developed into a series of studies in the history and essence of mathematics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and man's relationship with nature. Seres skillfully examined literary, philosophical, and scientific texts and drew original conclusions. Unlike post-war French thinkers, Serres did not belong to a particular school. He resisted the temptations of structuralism and recently led efforts to preserve the French philosophical tradition by emphasizing social and moral questions, in contrast to the infiltration of analytical philosophy such as the Anglo-American one that infiltrated French universities.
Serres, an athlete and mountain climber, never lost his practical and strong interest in the powers of the human body and the ways in which humanity exploits the earth - a subject that produced a series of important works, the most prominent of which is The Natural Contract, about humanity and the environment. His career was and still is public and academic. He represented France at the 7-G and UNESCO conferences, and preached to enable the attainment of knowledge for all.

Leon Wieseltier - thinker, writer and editor

Leon Wieseltier studied at Columbia and Oxford. At Harvard he engaged in advanced research in Jewish history and thought. In 1983, he was appointed to the position of literary editor of The New Republic, which deals with the central issues of our time, a position he holds to this day. His career began with articles, essays, and literary reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books. For more than thirty years he wrote works of prose, with incredible frequency, at an outstanding intellectual and stylistic level and in unparalleled English.

As a thinker and writer, with a wide knowledge, Wieseltier has always dealt with major public issues as he explores the historical and moral background while offering practical solutions. His original books discuss nuclear war (1983); The prevalence of identity as a central element in social and moral thought (it is actually against); And The Death of the Jewish Tradition (1998) - the latter inspired by the death of his father, is a work of unique beauty.
Now he is engaged in a comprehensive study of messianism, as a success and a failure, and of transience in the Jewish tradition.
Wieseltier was one of the first and most influential advocates for intervening against the extermination of the people in Bosnia. He repeatedly participated in discussions about Israel and the relationship between Israel and the United States. He recently wrote about the Arab Spring, being in favor of firm support for the Syrian rebels. Throughout his career, he defended the liberal tradition without ignoring the weaknesses and inconsistencies of many contemporary liberals. He also defended Israel while being aware of the moral complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and the arguments of the Palestinians.

Wieseltier cultivated a second, equally unique career as editor of The New Republic. Founded in 1914, this well-established liberal journal consistently publishes highly original and incisive reviews of fiction, poetry, history, and philosophy and gives young writers the opportunity to express themselves. Wieseltier created an extraordinary group of writers. The New Republic responds to contemporary realities and continues to set a high bar for serious cultural discussion in the United States.

It should be noted that these days Mr. Wieseltier is actually staying in Israel on the occasion of the INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR IN JERUSALEM conference.

Future time dimension - preventive medicine

Prof. Esther Duflo - economist

Prof. Esther Duflo's work deals with a wide range of social and economic strategies for alleviating poverty, and the direct consequences this has for preventing disease and death. In original approaches Duplo examines aspects of public policy in relation to the health and social habits of populations in order to measure the effect of these on the health of the population.

It should be noted that President Obama recently appointed Prof. Esther Duplo as a member of the Global Development Council Appointee for Member, President's Global Development Council.
Her fight against malaria in Africa:

It is widely estimated that malaria causes the death of more than a million people each year, mainly in Africa. One of the most effective and cheap ways to prevent the disease is to prevent the bites of the mosquitoes that transmit the cause of the disease using bed nets soaked in pesticides, among the policy makers a dispute arose whether to distribute free nets or charge money for them. The study conducted by Duplo and her colleagues in India suggested that cost reduces use.

Her work in the field of reducing indoor air pollution in third world countries:
Duplo found that in some countries in the third world, indoor air pollution caused by the use of fuel for cooking purposes in primitive conditions causes about 4% of all premature deaths and disabilities. It goes without saying that this situation gave way to prevention. It showed that the official public health authorities' decision to provide better and cheaper cooking stoves was not effective since the recipients of the stoves often returned to their previous usage patterns and were not exposed to less pollutants over time, which caused a reevaluation of the work assumptions among the decision makers.

Africa - lowering the infection rate of carriers by combining economic incentives and targeted education:
In a study conducted in Kenya, Duplo and her colleagues compared the effect of different combinations of incentives and education on rates of infection transmitted through contact with carriers, and showed precisely the degree of benefit that resulted from a combination of economic incentives and targeted education compared to not giving or giving only one component.
In rural India, Duplo and her colleagues examined the vaccination system in poor villages in three experimental groups:

• One group received a regular supply of vaccines,
• A second group received a regular supply of vaccines with a modest incentive for anyone who successfully completed the vaccination process.
• A third group received the vaccine components, but not regularly.

Surprisingly, under these conditions, the villages that received the incentives completed the vaccination process at a rate more than 2 times that of those that received a regular supply of the vaccines only and more than 6 times more than the villages that did not receive an incentive and a regular supply of vaccines.

Through the above examples, Duplo demonstrated that it is possible to conduct randomized studies with control groups under real conditions to influence policy choices in preventive medicine and other areas.
Prof. Duplo was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and received the best young French economist award (Le Monde, Cercle des economists), and the John Bates Clark Medal.

Duplo, who received her education in France and the USA, is not a conventional economist, but combines strict analytical methods and a special research style through which she rejected a number of accepted assumptions and created reliable indicators of results. The cumulative impact of her work against poverty and disease has the potential to improve the health of hundreds of millions of the poorest inhabitants of the planet.

Prof. Alfred Sommer / Alfred Sommer – epidemiologist

A surprising and impressive discovery in Prof. Alfred Sommer's research. Somer proved that vitamin A supplementation has the ability to save children's lives. In his study to prevent childhood blindness through vitamin A supplementation in Indonesia, Sommer was surprised to find that children who received vitamin A not only kept their sight, but that the death rate was much lower than among children who received a placebo.

At first these results were received with great skepticism since the effect seemed so impressive. Although no one demanded proof more than Somer himself. Somer repeated his research in Naples and Africa and showed that even a moderate vitamin A deficiency increases child mortality. More importantly, Somer showed conclusively that the devastating effects of vitamin A deficiency could be quickly and permanently reversed by oral vitamin A supplements, costing only 4 to 6 cents per child. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic case of scientific research adding life years on such a large scale at such a low cost.
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 250 million children under the age of 5 suffer from vitamin A deficiency.

An independent estimate by the WHO (Report Beaton estimates that deaths from various causes of children aged 6 to 59 months were reduced by 23% by vitamin A supplementation in areas where there is a high rate of vitamin A deficiency. A report from the World Bank stated that vitamin A supplementation is one The most effective and cost-effective medical interventions.

Somer's achievement was recognized by many awards, including the Lasker Prize for Medical Research,

the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, the Helmut Horten Medical Research Award,
and the Fries Prize for Improving Health. Somer's initial and decisive discovery, proving his arguments by randomized field studies, designing and testing a cost-effective intervention and his struggle to implement his discovery worldwide resulted in the saving of millions of children and millions more to be saved in the future.

Among the esteemed winners who received the Dan David Award in the past:
Al Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who received the award in the field of "social responsibility" (2008), Tony Blair in the field of "leadership" (2009), the writer Amos Oz for "the reflection of the past in the works of the present" (2008), the Chinese cellist Yo-Yo- What is in the field of "Cultural Heritage Preservation" (2006), and the brothers Eitan and Joel Cohen on "Cinema and Society" (2011).

The President of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Yosef Klefter, said upon learning the names of the prize winners: "The selection of this year's winners has a unique meaning, the winners illuminated the roots of Western culture and continued the path of the great classical thinkers who call for social justice, harmony with nature and disease prevention."

to the award website

Board members of the Dan David Prize:
Ariel David - Mr. Ariel David
Prof. Yosef Kapalter - Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of Tel Aviv University.
Prof. Helen Carrer d'Onkos Helene Carrere d'Encausse
Prof. Uriel Philipetti Aurélie Filippetti
Prof. Robert C. Gallo / Prof. Robert C. Gallo
Prof. Hanna Holbron Gray / Prof. Hannah Holborn Gray
Prof. Yehoshua Yurtner Joshua Jortner
Dr. Henry Kissinger / Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Prof. Jean-Marie Len / Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn
Prof. Itamar Rabinowitz Itamar Rabinovich
Emmanuel Roman / Mr. Emmanuel Roman
Francis Vahl / Mr. Francis Wahl