Honorees will discuss cells, future of computers and fighting oppression

The annual Kyoto Prize lecture series will take place in San Diego this week, with three eminent scholars scheduled to give free public talks on subjects as varied as the secret life of cells, the future of computers and the need to fight cultural oppression throughout the world.

In the fall, the Inamori Foundation in Japan announces its latest Kyoto Prize honorees in the categories of advanced technology, basic sciences and arts and philosophy. Each award recipient gets a gold medal and about half a million dollars.

Then in March, those Kyoto Prize laureates come to San Diego for a symposium.

The newest honorees are Ivan Sutherland, an expert on computer graphics and integrated circuits; Yoshinori Ohsumi, a pioneer in cell biology; and Gayatri Spivak, a distinguished literary critic and social activist.


74, visiting computer scientist, Portland State University

There was a time when people only typed text commands to make their computers work. It was OK for word processing but didn’t allow users to do much beyond that, especially when it came to images and graphics.

Looking to overcome these limitations, Sutherland developed the revolutionary computer program Sketchpad in 1963 while earning his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the first time, users could create graphical images directly on a computer screen with a hand-held device, an advance that stoked people’s imagination and productivity. It also changed how people interact with computers.

Sketchpad made a particularly strong impact on other computer scientists. It helped point the way to development of the graphical user interface, or GUI, the software that lets people interact with electronic devices by clicking or touching windows, icons and menus. GUI is essential to modern devices such as smartphones and laptop computers. It also has helped to improve animation, virtual reality and video editing.

Sketchpad was merely the opening act for Sutherland. The young engineer, who had been playing the primitive computer graphics game Spacewar at MIT, went on to shape some of the Defense Department’s early work in artificial intelligence. He also designed software that was, for its time, so robust that he became known as the “father of computer graphics.”

The moniker was enriched by his years at Caltech, where he helped develop groundbreaking courses on the design of integrated circuits. Variations of those courses spread across academia, producing engineers who have made everything from miniature glucose meters to the latest navigation systems used by American warships.

Sutherland is currently a visiting professor at Portland State University, where he’s known not only for his research but also for his sense of pragmatism. “If it isn’t fun,” Sutherland says, “you’re doing the wrong technology.”


67, molecular cell biologist, Tokyo Institute of Technology

There are at least 60 trillion cells in the human body. They perform different roles, but they have something in common: When they’re working right, they’re extraordinary “housekeepers.”

Cells literally take out the trash. They gather up broken and worn-out parts — such as membranes and proteins and mitochondria — set them aside and then eat them. Yes, eat them.


