The EPS Edison Volta Prize: double celebration
At EPS Council in Strasbourg, on 5 April 2013, the award ceremony of the EPS Edison Volta Prize 2012 took place in the presence of two of the three winners: Rolf Dieter Heuer and Stephen Myers.
The European Physical Society, the Centro di Cultura Scientifica “Alessandro Volta”, Como, Italy (birth town of A. Volta) and EDISON, Milan, Italy (Europe’s oldest energy company, founded in 1884) established the EPS Edison Volta Prize to promote excellent research and achievement in physics. The first edition of the EPS Edison Volta Prize was announced in November 2012 with the following citation:
“Building on decades of dedicated work by their predecessors, the 2012 EPS Edison Volta Prize has been awarded to: Rolf Dieter Heuer, CERN Director General, Sergio Bertolucci, CERN Director for Research and Computing, and Stephen Myers, CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology, for leading the culminating efforts in the direction, research and operation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider [LHC], which resulted in many significant advances in high energy particle physics, in particular, the first evidence of a Higgs-like boson in July 2012.”
Since then, the above mentioned Higgs-like boson has indeed become a Higgs boson and its properties have been better determined. Further studies are needed, as pointed out by Rolf Heuer in his lively speech to Council, after Steve Myers’ brilliant illustration of the fantastic performance of the LHC collider which allowed such an epochal discovery.
The winners also received the prize medal, a faithful reproduction in burnished silver of the “Medaglia Premio dell’Associazione per l’Incremento del Commercio in Como”, Tempio Voltiano Catalogue N. 2, 1877. The first edition was struck in 1838. The medal shows a neo classical realistic portrait of Alessandro Volta, work by Francesco Putinati, a renowned engraver who had been his contemporary. The contour of the medal bears the saying (in Latin): ALEXANDRO VOLTAE NOVOCOMENSI, i.e. (dedicated) to Alessandro Volta from Novum Comum, which was the old name given to the city of Como by Julius Caesar. The prize medals were conferred to the winners by EPS President Luisa Cifarelli. Representatives of EDISON R&D and Centro Volta Scientific Council, Sergio Zannella and Giulio Casati, also attended the ceremony.
One week later, a wonderful final award ceremony took place in the magnificent Villa Erba Antica, at Cernobbio, Lake Como, in the presence of the Mayor of Como, Mario Lucini, the President of Centro Volta, Giuseppe Castelli, the Chief Executive of EDISON, Bruno Lescoeur, and the EPS immediate past President. The relevance of the prize was duly highlighted. The event, organized by EDISON and Centro Volta, had a strong media resonance. All the winners were there and the concluding talk by Sergio Bertolucci on “Small particles, big questions and the optimism of curiosity” ravished the audience.
