Two winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry have more in common than they thought. Sir Harry Kroto and this year’s winner Dr. Daniel Shechtman are both tireless educators keen to stress the importance of learning.
On accepting his award in December 2011, Dr. Shechtman told the Nobel Committee “Education is vital to the survival and growth of a country’s future especially when natural resources are being depleted at an accelerated rate.” He believes it is the responsibility of all scientists to “promote education and encourage our youth to become technological entrepreneurs. Those countries that nurture this know-how will survive future financial and social crises. Let us advance science to create a better world for all.”
These sentiments were echoed by Sir Kroto, who was among the inspirational discussion leaders at the inaugural NEST – The Networked Society Forum in Hong Kong. The Nobel Laureate told an interviewer in 2011, “We have massive technical problems to solve for survival and sustainability, so we have to use all the tools at our disposal. And the new one, the Internet, has hardly started. One way of using it effectively would be to create a global cache of educational materials that teachers anywhere in the world can actually download.”
Related articles:
Sparking the Debate on Teaching
Related links:
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
To join the discussion and comment on articles, please sign up here.
