Professor Allan Snyder and Bell Laboratory's Dr Herwig Kogelnik are to share the world's 'foremost prize in communications and information technology.' The Marconi International prize of US$100,000 and a sculpture is given in memory of Guglielmo Marconi - the inventor of wireless transmission.

Kogelnik and Snyder join the ranks of communication greats including co-inventor of the laser, Nobel laureate Arthur Schawlow; the father of information theory, Claude Shannon; and space communications futurist, Arthur C Clarke.

The Chairman of the Marconi Foundation, Martin Meyerson said: "Allan Snyder is celebrated for his pioneering achievements in two apparently unrelated themes - the physics of physiological vision and the transmission of signals along optical fibres. Snyder demonstrates that research in one field can prove highly illuminating on the other."

"During the last two decades, optical technology has become the dominant means of long-distance telecommunications. The internet, which has so greatly transformed all our lives, is based on packets of laser light transmitted along hair-thin quartz fibres. Much of this transformation is attributable to the sparkling creativity demonstrated over many years by the two new Marconi Prize-winners." Meyerson said.
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