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The 1999 Kyoto Prize
1999
11 /11 Thu
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 1999 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
The Science and Technology of Made Things
Abstract of the lecture
Our production and use of man made objects and experiences are the principle activities of modern life. Advanced technology is not possible without man made things. This belief that made things including their composition and structure are coupled to production activities and to use and performance activities is my vision of ceramic materials science advanced technology. There are so many advanced technical applications of ceramics that an appreciation of this vision is best approached for a general audience by reviewing some historical examples.
Lecture topics
The Luck of Walter Munk
Abstract of the lecture
We have been asked to talk about ourselves. I have chosen the title of a talk given by Roger Revelle at the time of my sixty-fifth birthday. I was born in Austria, a land locked country, and sent to America at a very young age to learn something about banking in a New York Company that my grandfather had helped to start. After a few years of mediocre performance, I escaped to California and managed to get admitted to the California Institute of Technology. In my junior year I took a summer job at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and have been there (off-and-on) every since. The war intervened, and after service in the U.S. Army, I became involved in predicting wave conditions for amphibious landings. After the war I led an expedition following ocean waves from their birth in southern hemisphere storms to their demise in Alaska. This led to studies of waves of ever longer periods, tsunamis and tides. Tidal dissipation studies led to studies of the wobble of the Earth and in changes in the length of day. I was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to drill a hole in the bottom of the sea to recover samples of the Earth’s mantle. More recently, we have used long-range acoustic transmission to measure variability in ocean climate. These two activities evoked a good deal of public attention, mostly unfavorable. I have had the good fortune in serving my government in various capacities, particularly in relation to the U.S. Navy. I have started a geophysical research institute within the Scripps Institution, a part of the University of California at San Diego. In retrospect, my career has not followed any directed rational effort. Rather it has consisted to responding to a multitude of opportunities as they arose. I have been very fortunate in that some of these have been successful.
Lecture topics
Dance and Civilization
Abstract of the lecture
To dance is above all to communicate, to unite, to join together, and to touch others on a fundamental level of existence. Dance is union; union of one human being with another, one person with the cosmos, one human being with God. The spoken language remains within the dominance of delusion. Words, although seemingly easy to comprehend, can hide images that deceive and lead us into a never ending labyrinth of Babel-like semantics. Extended conversation more often leads to argument than to concord among people. To dance is also to speak the language of animals, to communicate with stones, to understand the song of the sea and the message in the wind, to discover with the stars, to approach the heights of existence itself. To dance is to transcend our poor human condition and to join fully Man, at the dawn of any civilization, furiously beat the ground with his bare feet. Rhythm came to life, then sound and space, and trance. In the union with invisible forces, the Dance is born.
