JERUSALEM, Feb. 19 (JTA) — Two Weizmann Institute researchers who developed a drug for treating multiple sclerosis are among this year’s winners of Wolf Prizes. Michael Sela and Ruth Arnon were jointly awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine for their “major discoveries in the field of immunology,” according to the prize committee. Copaxone, a new MS drug, won Food and Drug Administration approval for distribution in the United States last year. The prestigious Wolf Prizes are awarded annually in the fields of agriculture, physics and medicine, and are considered a predictor of the Nobel Prize. Two other Israelis also won Wolf Prizes. Ilan Chet, professor of agriculture and vice president for research and development at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will share the agriculture prize with Baldur Stefansson, a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada. Chet is the first Israeli to win the prize for agriculture. The two are being honored for their contributions to the “environmentally safe development of world agriculture through innovative approaches in breeding and bio-control.” Yakir Aharanov, a professor in the School of Physics at Tel Aviv University, will share the Wolf Prize in Physics with Sir Michael Berry, of Bristol University in England, for their work in quantum mechanics. Israeli President Ezer Weizman will present the $100,000 prize to the winners in each category at the Knesset on May 10. The Wolf Foundation was established in 1976 by the late Ricardo Wolf, an inventor, diplomat and philanthropist, and his wife Francisca Subirana-Wolf, for the purpose of promoting science and art for the benefit of mankind. Wolf, who was born in Germany, served as Cuban ambassador to Israel, where he died in 1981.
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