Members of Academia Europaea win 2023 Balzan Prizes
David Damrosch has been awarded the 2023 Balzan Prize for World Literature and Heino Falcke the Prize for High resolution images: from planetary to cosmic objects.
The aim of the International Balzan Prize Foundation is to promote culture, the sciences, and the most meritorious initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace, and fraternity among peoples throughout the world.
David Damrosch MAE was awarded the World Literature prize “for his creative approach to world literature as a transnational circulation of works that remain alive because they are embraced and changed beyond their culture of origin. For his stupendous knowledge of Western and non-Western literatures in all their geographical breadth and historical depth.”
David Damrosch is an American literary historian, currently the Ernest Bernbaum Professor at Harvard University. Professor Damrosch has been a member of the Literary and Theatrical studies Section of Academia Europaea since 2012.
Heino Falcke MAE has received the prize for high resolution images “for being the first to envision imaging the immediate surroundings of a black hole, and for his leadership of the “Event Horizon Telescope”, specifically designed for this purpose. This telescope produced the sharpest images ever of what surrounds black holes in the distant galaxy known as M87 and in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, thereby validating Einstein’s General Relativity in situations where gravity is so strong that spacetime is significantly curved.”
Heino Falcke is a German-Dutch professor of radio astronomy and astroparticle physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Professor Falcke has been a member of the Earth and Cosmic Sciences section of Academia Europaea since 2013.