Science can be the best diplomacy in the world, a universal language that connect cultures creating bridges among people. This is the purpose of the Award of Città della Scienza for the dialogue among cultures delivered to Maya Halevy to the memory of Peter Hillman, neuroscientist and founder of the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem.
The award was delivered during the opening ceremony of the Annual science festival Futuro Remoto on the 7th of November when Città della Scienza resumed first exhibition areas to the public after the criminal fire that damaged its science centre last 4 March 2013.
Graduated in Physics at the Harvard University, Peter Hillman dedicated most of his research to neurosciences becoming professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1980, he launched a project to create a center for science dissemination in Jerusalem and worked on this dream for more than 10 years, resulting with the creation of the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem.
Peter Hillman was an educated scientist, an open man, a peacemaker. For him, to spread his knowledge among the new generations and to put to their service his infinite passion for science was a commitment which he never given up. The Bloomfield Science Museum, located in the western part of Jerusalem, is now a place open to everybody, younger and older visitors, from every culture, religion and background.
With Peter Hillman, Città della Scienza had the honor to share a wonderful project for the construction of peace in the Middle East: the design and building of the first Palestinian Science Centre, through a cooperation among Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians. The MeetMath project was launched in 2004 with the aim of creating an exhibition on mathematics and the contributions of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean to its development. The exhibition, having been designed and built thanks to a common work, was exhibited in 2005 in Naples and in 2006 in West Jerusalem. Then it moved to the campus of AbuDees, where it’s still opened, run with passion by researchers at the University Al Quds.
It is also thanks to Peter Hillman if today the Al Quds University in East Jerusalem has succeeded in creating the first Palestinian science center, the result of a cooperation among three countries: Israel, Palestine and Italy, as well as Europe in general. Visited every year by tens of thousands of young people and families, this science centre is a proof that science can be a bridge between peoples, a lingua franca that combines together different cultures.
