American mathematician Shing-TungYau, German economist Juergen Voegele, Japanese medical scientist Yutaka Mizushima and Italian entrepreneur Elio Matacena received Wednesday the Chinese governmental award for international scientific and technological cooperation.

A noted Harvard professor, Shing-Tung Yau solved two important academic problems, the Calabi Conjecture and Positive Mass Conjecture. The Calabi-Yau Manifold, named after one of his most distinguished works, has been proved very vital in theoretical physics and mathematics.

In 1982, Yau, became the first Chinese American to win a Fields Medal, which was regarded as the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

Yau, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, donated 28.56 million yuan (US$3.44 million) and US$2.98 million for helping China set up several mathematics institutes.

With six honorary professorships at prestigious universities in China, Yau has advised dozens of Chinese doctoral candidates.

Juergen Voegele works for the World Bank in China. Since 1992, he has taken active roles in 46 World Bank aid programs in China, costing US$6.953 billion.

From 1994 to 2002, he coordinated the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation project, benefiting approximately 50 counties and more than one million people in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces as well as the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.

Yutaka Mizushima served as senator and consultant to the Japanese prime minister on medical development. In 1993, he decided to give the right of use of Lipo-PGE1 injection, the best of his 30-plus patents, to the Chinese. Ten percent of its commercial profits were allocated to a fund, supporting exchanges between Chinese and Japanese medical experts.

Mizushima also helped the Chinese to industrialize the drug, which helped relieve the suffering of about 3 million Chinese patients who had blood circulation problems.

President of Ponte Archimede S.P.A. Company, Elio Matacena actively pushed forward technological exchange between Italy and China.

He helped realize bilateral cooperation in Jintang Strait Submerged Floating Tunnels (Archimede Bridge) project and marine current electric power generation project. The Chinese and Italian governments have agreed to apply the two projects to the sixth Framework Project of the European Union.

Moreover, Matacena donated US$1 million in 2001 for establishing the Matacena Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Chinese government set up the international scientific and technological cooperation award in 1994 and awarded the first group of six scientists in 1995.

Chen Ning Yang and Tsung Dao Lee, both Nobel laureates, are among the award's 35 recipients from 12 foreign countries.

(People's Daily March 25, 2004)