The 2004 Eureka Prizes. (August 19, 2004)

    A record $220,000 was presented to 22 Australian Museum Eureka Prize winners at the 15th annual Australian Museum Eureka Prizes dinner at Sydney's celebrated Hordern Pavilion on August 10.

A complete listing of the prizes and their recipients is available online at  http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/.

Just some of the awards:

A new kind of plastic optical fibre will deliver practically unlimited internet bandwidth to our homes and businesses at an affordable price. The inventors - the Optical Fibre Technology Centre at the University of Sydney - have won the $10,000 Australian Computer Society Eureka Prize for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Innovation.

 

A revolutionary glove embedded with artificial muscles that can give movement back to people with paralysed hands has won its creator the $10,000 British Council Eureka Prize for Inspiring Science. PhD student Peter Abolfathi of the Quadriplegic Hand Research Unit at Royal North Shore Hospital says his glove will help people with permanent movement-loss to perform daily functions most of us take for granted.

 

One of the most exciting global advances in the systematic protection of marine biodiversity in recent decades, the Representative Areas Program wins the $10,000 Botanic Gardens Trust Eureka Prize for Biodiversity Research for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

 

Dr Sabina Belli has found an Achilles heel in the destructive bugs that cause malaria, cryptosporosis, toxoplasmosis and other diseases - a discovery with the potential for development of vaccines for these deadly diseases. The UTS veterinary parasitologist wins the $10,000 University of New South Wales Eureka Prize for Scientific Research.

 

"Teachers are often guilty of teaching science simply as a series of theories and laws, with little scope for negotiation," says Tasmanian teacher Anne Burke, research coordinator of Marist Regional College and winner of the inaugural $10,000 Holmes à Court Eureka Prize for Science Teaching.

 

David Ellyard has created a manuscript that provides an absorbing introduction to the development of scientific ideas over the last 500 years, and into the times and the people that created them. The manuscript wins David the $10,000 Reed New Holland Eureka Science Book Prize.