Category: Award Categories

2004 – Unsuk Chin

Composer Unsuk Chin’s “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” has won the 2004 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Premiered in Berlin in January 2002 by violinist Viviane Hagner and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester conducted by Kent Nagano, the 25-minute concerto has been described as “a synthesis of glittering orchestration, rarefied sonorities, volatility of […]

2003 – Mark Juergensmeyer

Why do religious people commit violence in the name of their God, victimizing and terrorizing innocents? Sociology professor Mark Juergensmeyer offers a timely study of religious terrorism and “cultures of violence” which give rise to it in his book, “Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence.” The director of the […]

2003 – Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky

Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences, earned the 2003 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology.His former colleague, the late psychology professor Amos Tversky, also received the award posthumously. Working as a team for nearly three decades, the psychologists revolutionized the scientific approach to decision making, ultimately affecting all […]

2003 – Stuart Kaufman

A book analyzing causes of contemporary ethnic conflict and making recommendations for peace won the 2003 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Dr. Stuart Kaufman, associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, will receive a $200,000 prize for the ideas in his book, “Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics […]

2003 – Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho of Finland won the $200,000 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for 2003 for her first opera, “L`amour de loin,” (love from afar). It premiered in August 2000 at the Salzburg Festival, directed by Peter Sellars and conducted by Kent Nagano. “L`amour de loin” is based on the story of the […]

2002 – Miroslav Volf

Is there any hope of embracing our enemies? Of opening the door to reconciliation? Yale University theologian Miroslav Volf argues in his book “Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation” that exclusion of people who are alien or different is among the most intractable problems in the world today. Volf’s exploration […]

2002 – James McClelland and David Rumelhart

David Rumelhart Two pioneers in the field of cognitive neuroscience have won the 2002 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. The second awarding of the $200,000 prize for outstanding contributions to the field of psychology is to experimental psychologists James McClelland and David Rumelhart, who began collaborating two decades ago on a cognitive framework […]

2002 – Aaron Jay Kernis

One of America’s most honored young composers, Aaron Jay Kernis, has won the world’s top international music composition prize, the 2002 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Kernis won the $200,000 prize for “Colored Field,” a concerto written for cello and orchestra and premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra in 2000. An earlier version […]

2001 – James L. Kugel

It might come as a shock to learn how many things the Bible doesn’t actually say. Do we suppose that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was “Satan,” or that Adam and Eve’s sin marked humanity’s “fall?” Then why, when we search the pages of the Bible, can we not find a clear word […]

2001 – Michael Posner, Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen

Three pioneers in the field of cognitive neuroscience won the 2001 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. The first awarding of the $200,000 prize for outstanding contributions to the field of psychology is to Michael Posner, Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen, who began collaborating in the mid-1980s to advance the ability to isolate and […]