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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Rewarding the talent of scepticism
Fatemah FaragIn the rearview mirror of history, nations are as often measured by the contributions they made to science and the arts, as for their feats of military valour or statesmanship. We remember the Sack of Troy and the Peleponnesian War more as works of literature than as acts of war; and even the New Kingdom matters as much for its funerary art, as for the pharaoh's endless victories over the Hittites and the Peoples of the Sea.
In recognition of the achievements of the nation's leading scientists and artists, each year the state makes a number of awards to acknowledge merit and encourage talent. Last year, the People's Assembly decided that, in order to keep abreast of the times, the number and the value of the existing awards should be increased, and two new types of prizes should be introduced.
Appropriate amendments were therefore made to Law 37 of 1958. This law has long governed the processes by which the nation's intellectual wealth is recognised, including the exhaustive bottom-up system of nomination, voting and final award. Thanks to these modifications, which took effect this year, the number of incentive awards was raised to 72, and their value increased to LE10,000 each. Meanwhile the number of merit awards rose to 19, and their value to LE50,000 each. Two new types of award were also established: the Gadara or Excellence Award, valued at LE25,000, and the Grand Mubarak Award, valued at LE100,000. This latter addition in particular has been widely interpreted as a deliberate gesture by the government meant to express the importance it places on supporting intellectual excellence.
The various awards, which range across the different branches of science and the arts, are made on the basis of a thorough selection process which begins in the nation's academic and research institutions. Nominations received are voted on, and the leading candidates are then subjected to a second round of assessment and elimination by the highest expert bodies in the land.
The final decisions concerning the science awards are made by the Academy of Technology and Science, which this year awarded nine merit, five excellence, and 40 incentive prizes. The awards went to an array of scientists working in fields that ranged from physics, chemistry and biology to medicine and engineering. The list was topped by nuclear scientist Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud El-Nadi, who carried off the Grand Mubarak Award for fundamental sciences. El-Nadi, whose name is synonymous with Egypt's nuclear programme initiated in the sixties, has two doctorates from the universities of Cairo and London, and is already a recipient of the state merit award in 1978. While the new amended law stipulates a second Grand Mubarak prize in the field of technology the award was withheld this year.
Merit awards in fundamental sciences were given to Abdel-Aal Hassan Mobasher, Ahmed Abdel-Azim, and Ahmed Medhat Islam. And another six Merit awards (two for each of the following branches: engineering, medicine and agriculture) were given respectively to Aziz Ahmed Yassin, Mohamed Adib Riyad, Abdel-Hay Mashur, Ahmed Sami Mahmoud, Bikir Abbas Otayfah and Ahmed Gamal Abdel-Sami'. Five excellence awards were given to Sayed Helmi Al-Ashri (fundamental sciences), Hamdi Zaki Abul-Eid (agriculture), Mohamed Abul-Ghar (medicine), Hussein Anis (engineering) and Fatmah El-Gohari (technology).
For awards in the arts and humanties category, the final decision is made by the Supreme Council for Culture. This year, the Grand Mubarak Award for literature went to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz who has written, in total, 49 novels, as well as numerous short stories and eight short plays. He has already been honoured a number of times, including the Order of Merit in 1962, the Order of the Republic in 1966 and the Merit Award in 1968. In 1988, he received both the Nobel Prize and the Nile Necklace.
Painter Salah Taher won the Grand Mubarak Award for arts. Taher is the precursor of abstract art in Egypt, and is famous in particular for his portraits. In 1953, he was appointed head of the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959 he was named head of the office of the minister of culture and in 1962 head of the Opera House. Over the past 60 years he has created over 15,000 works of art.
Abdel-Rahman Badawi was awarded the Grand Mubarak Award for humanties. Badawy is a philosopher and a Heidegger scholar. Born in 1917, he obtained his doctorate from Cairo University in 1943, presenting his first major work, Al-Zaman Al-Wugoudi (Existentialist Time). In 1950, he founded the department of philosophy at Ain Shams University and in 1956 he became the head of the cultural delegation in Bern, Switzerland. His work has taken him to many major educational institutions in France, Germany, Iran, Libya and Kuwait. In recognition of his contribution to philosophy, he was awarded the state merit prize in 1961.
Merit prizes for arts this year went to sculptor Adam Henein and architects Farouk El-Gohari and Abdallah Gohar, while Mahmoud Amin El-Alim and Mustafa Nassef won the literature merit prizes. In the field of social science four merit prizes were given to Mustafa El-Abadi, Yehya El-Gamal, Abdel-Azim Ramdan and Ehab Hassan Ismail.
The Excellence Awards in arts were awarded to Atef Salem and architect Abdel-Halim Ibrahim; for literature, to Mohamed Enani and Sabri Musa; and in social sciences, the winners were Awatef Abdel-Rahman, Salah Qunsuwah and Ibrahim El-Bahrawi.
In addition, 17 incentive awards were made in a number of categories ranging from geography to translation.
Prizes are of course a crucial means through which society can express its support and encouragement of the intellectual life, and one of the few by which the state can express directly and unequivocally the importance it places on its thinkers and creators. Yet the integration of new ways of thinking and seeing into the fabric of everyday social and political life are ultimately far more important than all the solemnity of such grand occasions. A society, after all, will be judged by history by the quality of its intellectual and artistic production, not by the number and monetary value of the official prizes. In this context, the annual state prizes are intended as simply a first step towards the reinvigoration of our intellectual life, not as an end in themselves. After the ceremony is over, the real work begins.
As this week's laureate El-Nadi himself said back in 1968: "Science requires first and foremost the talent of scepticism."
