During the course of history, what has been the most important invention? That was the question posed as the Lemelson Foundation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presented the winners of the 2001 Lemelson-MIT Awards Program--Dr. Raymond Kurzweil, the US$500,000 prize recipient, and Dr. Raymond Damadian for Lifetime Achievement. Established to inspire more kids to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology, the awards bestow not only prestige but also the word's largest monetary prize for invention.
"We have these role models who are sports figures and entertainment figures, but we want to foster an interest in inventing and get kids more excited about it. This program shows them that there is something great about innovation," said Kristen Joyce of the Lemelson-MIT Program. Each year, the top prize recognises one person whose invention has the potential to have a significant impact on society.
A pioneer in patterns, speech, and music
Motivation is something neither of this year's winners lacked. Kurzweil was already a renowned inventor before his 18th birthday. At 16, he built and programmed a computer that could compose original music based on the patterns of well-known classical works. His invention garnered the attention of President Lyndon B. Johnson and took first prize in the International Science Fair.
Three years later, while a student at MIT, Kurzweil started and sold his first company, Select Computer Systems, which was the first computer-based system that matched high school students and colleges.
Since then, Kurzweil's creations have gone on to impact the lives of just about everyone with his "omni-font" optical character recognition technology, with which computers can read and recognize printed or typed characters. The Kurzweil reading machine, which combined the first scanner and text-to-speech synthesiser to scan text and read it aloud, changed the lives of the vision-impaired. The Kurzweil Music System was the first electronic music synthesiser to reproduce realistically the complex sound of any musical instrument and revolutionised the music industry.
"I've always regarded failure as success deferred, because when it comes to innovation you've got to be willing to fail," Kurzweil said.
For Lifetime Achievement winner, Raymond Damadian, it was the death of his grandmother from cancer that inspired him to go on and create the Magnetic Resonance Scanning Machine in 1971. Six years later, his MRI technology successfully completed the first scan of the human body. Since then, the system has enabled doctors to save the lives of millions of people through early detection of cancer and other illnesses.
"Innovation is the thrill of discovery. Ideas come from this thrill," he said.
The Student Prize of US$30,000 went to 27-year-old doctoral candidate Brian Huber, who holds patents for a plastic memory chip and a superconductor fabrication system. In his current research, he developed a super small "nano-machine" for assembling stuctures several thousand atoms at a time--a first step in making molecule-sized machines.
