Winners and Prizes

A Large Number of Winners

We were very aware that awarding prizes is a delicate and dangerous business, leading in many documented cases to dissention, sabotage, and insurrection. Wishing to avoid this we applied a modified version (we didn't know what most of the symbols stood for) of the following formula from How Many Winners Are Good to Have? On Tournaments with Sabotage by Harbring and Irlenbusch:

This is a transcript of the award announcements made at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science on Thursday 18 January 2007 by Helen Macfarlane, co-organizer of the exhibition:

"The jury faced an impossible task, to choose a few images for the traveling and on-line shows from more than 240 that were submitted. We know that a different jury would have chosen a different exhibition, so we are pretty sure that, with the right jury, everyone who submitted would have been a winner.

"With that in mind, and only 3 prizes to present, we decided that we couldn't distinguish between first, second, and third. So we came up with prize names that the winners can put on their resumes, to suggest that each one of them won the top prize.

"The winner of the FIRST PRIZE in the First CU Art in Science | Science in Art competition, is medical student and artist MARSHALL DINES, for CELL PORTRAIT.

"The next prize is given to a work, about which one juror commented: "I don't know what it is, but that pattern! Those colors!!" and John Cohen said: "If they had slides like that when I was in medical school, maybe I'd have learned something." This is microscopic anatomy raised to the level of high art.

"The winner of the JURY PRIZE in the First CU Art in Science | Science in Art competition, is pathologist and faculty member CARLYNE COOL, for PLEXIFORM PULMONARY ARTERY.

"When this next image came in on my computer, I thought it was kind of grainy, and then I noticed that, if printed at its correct size, it would have been 26 feet across! Enlarged, it became something quite different from what it first appeared to be. The judges were amazed by the idea behind this work, and the complexity of its execution. This work sits right in the middle between Art and Science, and it enhances both.

"The winner of the GRAND PRIZE in the First CU Art in Science | Science in Art competition, is computer scientist and post-doc on his way to MIT, BRIAN SHUCKER, for C DNA."

Each winner then made remarks that were exemplary for wit, sophistication, and especially brevity.