L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award for 2005 has been given to five women scientists. This year’s awards, which coincide with the World Year of Physics, are devoted to material sciences. Of the five winners, three are well-known to ICTP:
• Zohra Ben Lakhdar, Universite de Tunis, Laboratoire de Physique Atomique Moleculaire, Tunis, Tunisia. Ben Lakhdar, who is an ICTP Associate, has participated in the colleges on optics since 1999.
• Myriam Sarachik, City University of New York, USA. Sarachik spoke at the 3rd Stig Lundqvist Conference on Advancing Frontiers in Condensed Matter Physics, and served on the Advisory Committee of the Tenth Hopping and Related Phenomena Conference (HRP 10) in 2003.
• Fumiko Yonezawa, Keio University, Kawasaki, Japan. Yonezawa participated in the Conference on ‘Wetting’ in 1999.
Other L’Oreal-UNESCO 2005 winners include Belita Koiller, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Dominique Langevin, University of Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
The L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award, which was established in 1998, has become the world’s most prestigious prize for women scientists. Each award carries a US$100,000 cash prize. The official awards ceremony took place at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 3 March.