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Ottawa, April 24, 2003 - Five prominent scholars in the fields of electrical and computer engineering, economics, philosophy, immunology and ecology will be honoured with the 2003 Killam Prizes, Canada’s most distinguished annual awards for outstanding career achievements in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, social sciences and humanities.

The awards to Edward J. Davison, W. Erwin Diewert, François Duchesneau, Tak Mak and David Schindler were announced today by the Canada Council for the Arts, which administers the Killam program.

The Killam Prizes, inaugurated in 1981, are financed through funds donated to the Canada Council by Mrs. Dorothy J. Killam before her death, in memory of her husband, Izaak Walton Killam. The prizes were created to honour eminent Canadian scholars and scientists actively engaged in research, whether in industry, government agencies or universities. When the Canada Council was created in 1957, its mandate was to support both the arts and scholarly research; although this changed with the creation of separate research councils, the Canada Council retained responsibility for the Killam program. The Killam fund at the Canada Council was valued at some $62.7 million as of March 31, 2002. The Killam Trusts, which fund scholarship and research at four Canadian universities, a research institute and the Canada Council, are valued at approximately $400 million.

The Canada Council will present the Killam Prizes at a dinner and ceremony commencing at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21 at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton, Alberta. This is the first time the annual Killam event will be taking place in Alberta.

Promotion of the Killam Prizes is sponsored by Scotiabank Group through support for the awards dinner and celebratory announcements in newspapers across Canada. Scotiabank is one of North America’s premier financial institutions and Canada's most international bank. With approximately 49,000 employees, Scotiabank Group and its affiliates serve about 10 million customers in some 50 countries around the world. Scotiabank offers a diverse range of products and services including personal, commercial, corporate and investment banking. With C$290 billion in assets (as at January 31, 2003), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto (BNS), New York (BNS) and London (BNV) Stock Exchanges. For more information please visit www.scotiabank.com

Edward J. Davison, University of Toronto, Engineering

Edward J. Davison, University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, is a pre-eminent scholar and world leader in the field of Automatic Control and Automation. He has made outstanding contributions with respect to the fundamental properties and characteristics of Control Systems, focusing on the control of large-scale systems. These systems occur often in modern industrial society, in such fields as chemical engineering, power systems, aerospace systems and transportation systems as well as in management science and biological systems.

Dr. Davison’s research has had a major impact on a wide spectrum of issues in control systems, ranging from the development of theoretical ideas and their implementation as computational algorithms to practical industrial applications.

Dr. Davison is internationally recognized for his research contributions. He has received many awards including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1997 Control System Society’s Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize and the 1993 Triennial Giorgio Quazza Medal from the International Federation of Automatic Control, for lifetime research contributions. He has been invited to be the keynote speaker in many major international conferences. Two international workshops have been held to honour Dr. Davison. He was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Non-linear Sciences in 1998, Honorary Professor of the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1978. He has been Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1977.

W. Erwin Diewert, University of British Columbia, Social Sciences

W. Erwin Diewert, Professor of Economics at University of British Columbia, is an internationally renowned economic theorist, empirical economist and policy analyst. His seminal contributions to economic theory, especially production theory, have been the source of numerous doctoral dissertations all over the world. He is one of the most well known Canadian economists of our times. His work in the productivity measurement and productivity dynamics has been invaluable in understanding the cross-country and intertemporal patterns and trends in productivity growth, innovation and living standards for statistical agencies, government departments and policy analysts all over the world.

Dr. Diewert has served on a number of key national and international advisory boards and councils of statistical agencies over the past several decades. He has made important contributions on the theory and practice of modern microeconomics as well as on the empirical estimation of models of producer and consumer behaviour and on productivity measurement. He has also made fundamental contributions to the economic theory of index numbers. Dr. Diewert’s influence has been monumental, not just on academic research but also on the computation of official government economic statistics in Canada, the United States, the U.K., Germany, Sweden, Australia and France. He has made profound and far-reaching contributions to Canada through his scientific research and his sound advice. Dr. Diewert has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1982.

François Duchesneau, Université de Montréal, Humanities

François Duchesneau, Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, is a major international expert on the history of modern philosophy and the history and philosophy of science. His research has focused on the empiricist theories of knowledge, the history and philosophy of life sciences and the philosophy and scientific work of Leibniz; however, the remarkable and rare synthesis that his innovative work represents in all these areas at once makes him unique in the humanities.

Dr. Duchesneau is an active researcher who works, not at the margins, but at the centre of academic, social and cultural life. He contributes both to the development of knowledge and to the development of institutions and has a powerful influence on all of the individuals involved in his work.

He has produced a great many scholarly writings of extraordinary range and quality. What is particularly original about Dr. Duchesneau’s work is that it brings together in a significant and interesting way the history of philosophy and the history of life sciences.

Dr. Duchesneau holds a Doctorat d’État ès lettres et sciences humaines from the Université de Paris I. He has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada since 1984. He won the Prix des sciences humaines from the Association canadienne française pour l’avancement des sciences in 1992 and a Killam Research Fellowship in 1995.

Tak Mak, University of Toronto, Health Sciences

For more than two decades, Tak Mak has been counted as one of a handful of international leaders in virology, immunology, molecular biology and cancer genetics. His research has had an enormous impact on science all over the world and forms the foundation for novel therapeutic approaches to many diseases. His seminal papers describing the cloning of the gene, which encodes the T cell receptor, opened the floodgates of knowledge concerning the T cell biology. This had fundamental impact in both the basic understanding of immunology as well as the underlying basis for immune system diseases.

Dr. Mak was instrumental in creating genetically engineered mice to increase understanding of the human immune system, apoptosis and tumorigenesis. Under his guidance, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows continue to make seminal contributions in the areas of immune system regulation, programmed cell death and survival, and cancer.

Dr. Mak is a University Professor at the University of Toronto whose numerous awards include the Order of Canada, memberships in the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada, the Gairdner International Award, the Sloan Prize of the General Motors Cancer Foundation, the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine and the Novartis Prize in Immunology. In March 2004, Dr. Mak and Professor Mark Davis will be presented with the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, the highest and most internationally-renowned prize awarded in the Federal Republic of Germany in the field of medicine. Dr. Mak holds numerous patents and has published over 500 articles in scientific journals around the world.

David Schindler, University of Alberta, Natural Sciences

David Schindler is Killam Memorial Professor of Ecology at the University of Alberta. His outstanding contributions to science cross disciplinary boundaries and have addressed problems of eutrophication, acid rain, climate change and biodiversity. His pioneering whole-ecosystem studies have been the basis of policy decisions and measures that have saved thousands of lakes around the world. He was the first person to tie together the effects of the global phenomena of acid precipitation, climate warming and stratospheric ozone depletion on freshwater ecosystems.

Dr. Schindler’s career has been marked by outstanding science that encompasses high quality research on processes that control how aquatic ecosystems function. A large number of his 250 plus publications have appeared in the most prestigious international journals. His work has had a profound and widespread influence on freshwater management and policy throughout the world.

Dr. Schindler holds numerous awards, including the G. E. Hutchinson Medal (American Society of Limnology and Oceanography), the Naumann-Thienemann Medal, the first Stockholm Water Prize, the Manning Distinguished Achievement Award and the Volvo Environment Prize. In 2001 he received the Award of Excellence and the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and of the Royal Society of Canada and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

General information

The Canada Council for the Arts, in addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts in Canada, administers and awards a number of distinguished prizes in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences and engineering. Among these are the Killam Research Fellowships, the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prizes, the John G. Diefenbaker Awards, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts and the Walter Carsen Prizes for Excellence in the Performing Arts.

For more information about these awards and prizes, including nomination procedures, contact Janet Riedel, Endowments and Prizes Officer, at (613) 566-4414, or 1-800-263-5588, ext. 4116. E-mail: janet.riedel@canadacouncil.ca

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