Prague, Sept 26 (CTK) – American solid-state physicist Nathaniel David Mermin will receive the annual Vision 97 prize from the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation on October 5, Eva Gajdosova told CTK on behalf of the organisers on Tuesday.
The Vision 97 prize is bestowed on thinkers who contributed to the understanding of science as an integral part of general culture, who focus on matters related to cognition, being and human existence in an unconventional way.
Mermin, 82, deals with philosophical aspects of quantum mechanics and special relativity, apart from solid-state physics and low-temperature physics. He has a doctor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and he taught physics at Cornell University for many years.
Before the prize awarding ceremony at the Prague Crossroads, Mermin will take part in a round-table discussion together with Czech mathematicians Petr Kurka and Ivan Havel, physicists Roman Kotecky and Bedrich Velicky and philosopher Jan Sokol, last year’s winner of the Vision 97 prize.
The prize is awarded on the birth anniversary of late president and thinker Vaclav Havel (1936-2011).
The past winners of the Vision 97 prize include U.S. historian Timothy Snyder, Czech sociologist Miloslav Petrusek, Austrian philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann and U.S. economist Robert B. Reich.
