BBC News | SCI/TECH | Japan Prize laureates announced (original) (raw)

A landscape architect who brought environmental considerations into urban planning and an immunologist who conducted groundbreaking research on allergies have picked up the prestigious Japan Prize for the year 2000.

The prize, which carries a substantial cash award of �300,000, is not unlike the Nobel Prizes for science that are handed out every October.

Ian McHarg, 79, an American professor of landscape architecture and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania has been recognised for introducing ecological ideas into city planning and devising an evaluation system that clarifies restrictions on land use, the citation committee said.

Kimishige Ishizaka, 74, a professor at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, has been honoured for discovering a type of immunoglobulin that causes allergies.

The Science and Technology Foundation of Japan will give both men a commemorative medal at a special ceremony in Tokyo on 29 April next year.

Established in 1985, the Japan Prize is awarded each year in two categories of science and technology that have been predetermined and are rotated every three years.

The 2001 awards will be for marine biology and environmentally-conscious materials. The awards tend to go to very recent research, unlike the Nobels which can go to scientists who completed their groundbreaking work many years earlier.

Recent winners have included Theodore Maiman, who made the first laser, and Karry Mullis, who devised the so-called PCR technique which has revolutionised the study of genetics.