HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) is a merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting more than 1,400 scientists in some 100 countries. Its principal aim is to promote scientific capacity and excellence for
sustainable development Sustainable development is an approach to growth and Human development (economics), human development that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.United Nations General ...
in
developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...
. It was formerly known as the ''Third World Academy of Sciences''. Its headquarters is located on the premises of the
International Centre for Theoretical Physics The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is a research center for physical and mathematical sciences, located in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. The center operates under a tripartite agreement between the Gov ...
in
Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...
, Italy.


History

TWAS was founded in 1983 under the
leadership Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...
of the
Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes (, ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in th ...
Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1 ...
of
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
by a group of distinguished scientists who were determined to do something about the dismal state of scientific research in
developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...
. * Although developing countries account for 80% of the world's population, only 28% of the world's scientists hail from these countries. This fact reflects the lack of innovative potential necessary to solve real-life problems affecting poor nations. * A chronic lack of funds for research often forces scientists in developing countries into intellectual isolation, jeopardizing their careers, their institutions and, ultimately, their nations. * Scientists in developing countries tend to be poorly paid and gain little respect for their work because the role that scientific research can play in development efforts is underestimated. This in turn leads to brain drain in favour of the North that further impoverishes the South. * Research institutions and universities in the South are under-funded, forcing scientists to work in difficult conditions and often with outdated equipment. The founding members of TWAS therefore decided to set up an organization that would help to: # Recognize, support and promote excellence in scientific research in the South; # Provide promising scientists in the South with research facilities necessary for the advancement of their work; # Facilitate contacts between individual scientists and institutions in the South; # Encourage South–North cooperation between individuals and centres of scholarship; # Promote scientific research on major
developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...
problems. Since its inception, TWAS's operational expenses have largely been covered by generous contributions of the Italian government; since 1991
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
has been responsible for the administration of TWAS finance and staff on the basis of an agreement signed by the director general of UNESCO and the president of TWAS. It was named "Third World Academy of Sciences" until 2004 and "TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world" before September 2012, when it was renamed to is current name, "The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries".


Founding fellows

The founding fellows of 1983 include *
Hua Luogeng Hua Luogeng or Hua Loo-Keng (; 12 November 1910 – 12 June 1985) was a Chinese mathematician and politician famous for his important contributions to number theory and for his role as the leader of mathematics research and education in the Peop ...
(1910–1985),
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
*
Nil Ratan Dhar Nil Ratan Dhar FNA, FRSC (2 January 1892 – 5 December 1986) was an Indian professor of soil science and chemistry at the University of Allahabad, known for discovering thermal and photo-chemical fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. ...
(1892–1987),
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
* Luis F. Leloir (1906–1987),
Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
*
Benjamin Peary Pal Benjamin Peary Pal or B. P. Pal FRS (26 May 1906 – 14 September 1989) was an Indian plant breeder and agronomist who served as a director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi and as the first Director General of the Indian ...
(1906–1989), India *
Ignacio Bernal Ignacio Bernal (February 13, 1910 in Paris - January 24, 1992 in Mexico City) was an eminent Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist. Bernal excavated much of Monte Albán, originally starting as a student of Alfonso Caso, and later led major a ...
(1910–1992),
Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
*
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (6 March 1912 – 17 May 1994) was an Austrian anthropologist and archaeologist. He is known for his fieldwork among many different Amerindian cultures such as in the Amazonian tropical rainforests (e.g. Desana Tucano) ...
(1912–1994),
Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
*
Emilio Rosenblueth Emilio Rosenblueth Deutsch (1926–1994) was a Mexican engineer who devoted himself to the research of seismic events, and in particular to study the behavior of buildings against earthquakes and other seismic activity. Born in Mexico City, Ros ...
(1926–1994), Mexico *
Salimuzzaman Siddiqui Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, ( ; 19 October 1897 – 14 April 1994) was a Pakistani organic chemist specialising in natural products, and a professor of chemistry at the University of Karachi. Siddiqui studied philosophy at Aligarh Muslim Univers ...
(1897–1994),
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
*
Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1 ...
(1926–1996), Pakistan *
Carlos Chagas Filho Carlos Chagas Filho (September 10, 1910 – February 16, 2000) was a Brazilian physician, biologist and scientist active in the field of neuroscience. He was internationally renowned for his investigations on the neural mechanisms underlying ...
(1910–2000),
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
*
Johanna Döbereiner Johanna Liesbeth Kubelka Döbereiner (28 November 1924 – 5 October 2000) was a Brazilian agronomist and pioneer in soil biology. Biography Döbereiner was born in Ústí nad Labem, in what was the Republic of Czechoslovakia, which is now the ...
(1924–2000), Brazil *
Gopalasamudram Narayana Ramachandran Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran, or G. N. Ramachandran, FRS (8 October 1922 – 7 April 2001) was an Indian physicist who was known for his work that led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure. He ...
(1922–2001), India * Thomas Risley Odhiambo (1931–2003),
Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
*
Marcel Roche Marcel Roche Dugand (August 15, 1920 in Caracas, Venezuela – May 3, 2003 in Miami, USA) was a physician, scientist and scientific leader. He was born into a wealthy family of French origin. His father, Luis Roche was a well known urbanist. H ...
(1920–2003),
Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
*
Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar FNA, FRS (6 August 1930 – 8 March 2004) was an Indian physicist who won the Royal Medal in 1994. He was the founder-president of the International Liquid Crystal Society. Chandrasekhar was born on 6 August 1 ...
(1930–2004), India * Thomas Adeoye Lambo (1923–2004),
Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
*
Autar Singh Paintal Autar Singh Paintal (24 September 1925 – 21 December 2004) was an Indian medical scientist who made pioneering discoveries in the area of neurosciences and respiratory sciences. He is the first Indian Physiologist to become the Fellow o ...
(1925–2004), India *
Hélio Gelli Pereira Hélio Gelli Pereira (September 23, 1918 – 16 August 1994) was a Brazilian-British virologist specialising in adenoviruses. Pereira was a co-recipient of the 1988 UNESCO Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology and was known for his work on the ...
(1918–1994), Brazil, United Kingdom * Khem Singh Gill (1930–2019), India * Ricardo Bressani Castignoli (1926–2015), Guatemala * Daniel Adzei Bekoe (1928–2020),
Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
* Albert Rakoto Ratsimamanga (1907-2001), Madagascar *
Félix Malu wa Kalenga Félix Malu wa Kalenga (September 22, 1936 — April 22, 2011) was a Congolese emeritus professor of Nuclear Physics and a scientist. He was a founding member of the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS). He was a professor at Lovan ...
(1936-2011), Democratic Republic of Congo *
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian Americans, Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and ...
(1909-1995), India, USA * C.R. Rao (1920-2023), India, USA *
Shiing-Shen Chern Shiing-Shen Chern (; , ; October 26, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geome ...
(1911-2004), China, USA * C.N.R. Rao (b.1934), India *
Sir Michael Atiyah Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the ...
(1929-2019), United Kingdom, Lebanon *
Baruj Benacerraf Baruj Benacerraf (; October 29, 1920 – August 2, 2011) was a Venezuelan-American immunologist, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the "discovery of the major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell s ...
(1920-2011), Venezuela, USA *
Humberto Fernández-Morán Humberto Fernández-Morán Villalobos (18 February 192417 March 1999) was a Venezuelan research scientist born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, known for inventing the diamond knife or scalpel, significantly advancing the development of electromagneti ...
(1924-1999), Venezuela, Sweden * Ali Javan (1926-2016), Iran, USA *
Har Gobind Khorana Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011) was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and ...
(1922-2011), India, USA *
M. G. K. Menon Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon (28 August 1928 – 22 November 2016) also known as M. G. K. Menon, was an Indian physicist and policy maker who served as the Chairperson of the Indian Space Research Organisation in 1972 and also ser ...
(1928-2016), India *
Ricardo Miledi Ricardo Miledi (15 September 1927 – 18 December 2017) was a Mexican neuroscientist known for his work deciphering the role of calcium in neurotransmitter release. He also helped to develop a technique for studying native receptors in frog oocyt ...
(1927-2017), Mexico *
César Milstein César Milstein, CH, FRS (8 October 1927 – 24 March 2002) was an Argentine biochemist in the field of antibody research. Milstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 with Niels Kaj Jerne and Georges J. F. Köhler for ...
(1927-2004), Argentina, United Kingdom *
M.S. Swaminathan Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (7 August 1925 – 28 September 2023) was an Indian geneticist and plant breeder, administrator and humanitarian. Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution. He has been called the main architect of ...
(1925-2023), India *
Yang Chen-Ning Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang (; born 1 October 1922), also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge th ...
(b. 1922), China, USA *
Crodowaldo Pavan Crodowaldo Pavan (; 1 December 1919 – 3 April 2009) was a Brazilian biologist and geneticist, and a scientific leader in Brazil. Early life Pavan was born to a family of second-generation immigrants from Italy in 1919, in the city of Campinas, ...
(1919-2009), Brazil *
Tsung-Dao Lee Tsung-Dao Lee (; November 24, 1926 – August 4, 2024) was a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee–Yang theorem, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons, and ...
(1926–2024), China, USA *
Devendra Lal Devendra Lal FRS (14 February 1929 – 1 December 2012) was an Indian geophysicist. Life He was born in Varanasi, India. He graduated from Banaras Hindu University. He graduated from Bombay University; his thesis was on cosmic ray physics; h ...
(1929-2012), India, USA * Muhammad Akhtar (b. 1933), Pakistan, United Kingdom * Samuel C.C. Ting (b. 1936), China, USA *
Héctor Croxatto Héctor Croxatto Rezzio (3 July 1908—28 September 2010) was a Chilean physiologist. He won the Chilean National Prize for Sciences (Chile), National Prize for Sciences in 1979. He was a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Raised in Te ...
(1908-2010), Chile


TWAS Prize

The TWAS Prize is an annual award instituted in 1985 by TWAS to recognize excellence in scientific research in the
global South Global North and Global South are terms that denote a method of grouping countries based on their defining characteristics with regard to socioeconomics and politics. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Global South broadly com ...
. At inception, the award was titled ''TWAS Awards in Basic Sciences'' and was awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics categories but was merged with the ''TWNSO (Third World Network of Scientific Organizations) Prizes in Applied Sciences'' in 2003 to form the present-day TWAS Prize, which is awarded in nine categories viz. Agricultural Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Mathematics, Medical Sciences, Physics and Social Sciences. The award carries a plaque and a cash prize of  15000 and is open to scientists living and working in a developing country.


See also

*
Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World The Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) is an International organization, international organisation that provides research training, career development and networking opportunities for women scientists throughout t ...


References


External links

*
TWAS
– official website {{DEFAULTSORT:World Academy of Sciences, The Members of the International Council for Science 1983 establishments in Italy Academies of sciences Trieste Scientific organizations established in 1983 Members of the International Science Council Organisations based in Trieste