On Friday, the names of this year’s winners of the Global Energy Prize were announced in Moscow. They are Russian scientists Boris Katorgin and Valery Kostyuk and UK scientist Rodney John Allam. The awarding ceremony will take place in St. Petersburg, as a part of an international economic forum, which is traditionally held in this city. The amount of the prize, if translated into dollars, is more than $ 360,000. This year, the Global Energy Prize marks 10 years since its foundation. It is an international prize awarded for discoveries and inventions which help to save energy and are at the same time harmless to the environment. Since 2003, scientists from Russia, the US, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, Iceland, Canada and Ukraine have become winners of this prize. This year, all the three winners of the prize are awarded for inventions which have to do with space. Boris Katorgin and Valery Kostyk are awarded for inventing new types of space rocket engines, and Rodney John Allam – for inventing new kinds of rocket fuel. The time when scientific discoveries and inventions were made by individuals has long passed away. Moreover, today, discoveries and inventions, as a rule, appear not as a result of work of one scientific institution, or even several institutions in one country, but as a result of scientists’ international cooperation – and all the three winners acknowledge this. Rodney John Allam says that he would not have made his inventions without cooperation with the Institute of Thermal Physics in the Russian city of Novosibirsk. In an interview with the Voice of Russia, another winner, Boris Katorgin, said: “In fact, I don’t know why the jury chose me personally – I believe that the whole staff of the Energomash company, for which I work, deserves this prize. Our company has been producing engines for rockets and other flying devices for a long time, and they have proved themselves very well.” At present, engines made by Energomash are used not only on Russian space devices, but on some US ones as well. Mr. Katorgin says that his company has already registered 13 patents in the US. Very soon, the Energomash engines will be used in a number of other countries – contracts to that end have already been signed. According to estimates, these contracts may bring an income of about $ 1 bln to Russia. Source: Voice of Russia
