Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Premier, Minister of Defence and Aviation and Inspector General, handed over King Faisal International Awards to five scholars from the Middle East, Asia and Europe at a special ceremony held last night at Al-Faisaliah Centre, Riyadh.
The SR750,000 prizes are awarded each year for outstanding work in the fields of science, medicine, Islamic studies, Arabic literature and service to Islam. The prize-winners were announced on 27 January.
The ceremony was attended by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, Governor of Asir Region, who is also Director General of the King Faisal Foundation.
This year’s science prize was awarded to Semir Zeki, a Professor of Neurobiology at University College London, for his seminal work on the organization of the visual brain. A statement by the King Faisal Foundation said that Zeki was “the first to show that the visual brain consists of many different areas that are functionally specialized to process and perceive different attributes of the visual scene. Professor Zeki’s contributions have had a tremendous impact on the biology of vision,” the statement said.
Swiss Professor Ulrich Sigwart, a Professor of Cardiology and Chief of the Cardiology Centre at Geneva University, won the prize for medicine.
The prize for Arabic language and literature went to Hussain Muhammad Nassar of Egypt, a Professor of Arabic Language at Cairo University. In addition to writing books and articles on Arabic, Professor Nassar has also edited several anthologies of the pre-Islamic and Islamic eras, the statement said.
Dr Ali Ahmad Nadvi from India and Dr Yaqoub Al-Bahussain from Saudi Arabia shared the prize for Islamic Studies. In a book on Islamic jurisprudence on financial matters, Dr Al-Nadvi attempted to adapt some of the concepts of earlier Islamic scholars to modern circumstances, according to the citation. Dr Al-Nadvi, who is the Head of Shariah Advisers at Al-Rajhi Financial Company, said that one of the most distinctive features of Islamic Shariah is its stress on humanism and justice. Dr Al-Bahussain has made original studies of the fundamental rules of Islamic jurisprudence.
Source: SPA
