Arthur C. Clarke 100th birthday Awards
December 11, 2017
The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation has honoured three outstanding winners of the 2017 Sir Arthur Clarke Awards, continuing a long-running Foundation tradition and celebrating the birth of Clarke in England on December 16th 1917.
The Clarke Award for Lifetime Achievement goes to Stephen Hawking for “expanding our understanding of cosmology, time and the universe.” Kim Stanley Robinson is the Foundation’s selection for the 2017 Award for Impact of the Imagination for “fiction that blends ecological, political and scientific dimensions to inspire a future society.” John Hendricks is the Foundation’s choice for the Innovator’s Award for “pioneering work bringing the wonder of Discovery into our homes.”
“This year’s Arthur C. Clarke honourees join a distinguished roster of previous winners of the Foundation’s awards, and each demonstrates by his accomplishments what imagination rooted in expertise and determination can accomplish for humankind,” Foundation Chair Walda W. Roseman said. “Stephen Hawking is perhaps the world’s most famous and accomplished visionary of our shared future and arguably its foremost theoretical physicist. Kim Stanley Robinson’s fact-based science fiction would put Sir Arthur immediately at ease. Those two could have talked for years.”
John Hendricks started the Discovery Channel with a dream and coupled that dream to emerging satellite-based television home delivery technology, blending space age capabilities with engaging and timeless content, a true ‘Clarkean’ double-play.”
The Clarke Foundation, Ms. Roseman said, “is thrilled to bring together three extraordinary awardees and to hear them share with us their visions and plans for the future at the Foundation’s Clarke Centenary Celebratory Year activities, “We are excited about celebrating Sir Arthur’s 100th birthday this year by introducing our intergenerational program for imaginative leadership.”
The Awards were made on Saturday evening at George Washington University, DC.
Previous Arthur C. Clarke Innovation winners include Greg Wyler, founder of OneWeb and O3b, Skybox Imaging, for groundbreaking space imaging which has embraced small satellite technology, Mark Dankberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, Hughes Network Systems CEO Pradman Kaul, SpaceX founder and entrepreneur Elon Musk, Cornell University professor and Mars Rover programme team leader Steven Squyres, Bigelow Aerospace’s Robert Bigelow, for leading the way for private sector entrepreneurs willing to advance space exploration and activity with minimum reliance on government programs, Dr. Brad Edwards, for leading in the design of a space elevator to move cargo to the Clarke Orbit from the Earth’s surface, and D.K. Sachdev and Dr. S. Joseph Campanella, for designing and implementing the world’s first audio broadcasting (Worldspace) satellite.
Other posts by Chris Forrester: