2005 Winners

Bioscience: Herbert Boyer, co-founder and director of Genentech, and Stanley Cohen, professor of genetics and medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, for developing recombinant DNA technology.
This is the fundamental innovation that allows genetic material from two sources to be combined, making possible the use of bacteria as drug factories and the genetic engineering of plants and animals. The two men had the idea while eating pastrami and corned-beef sandwiches when attending a conference in Hawaii.
Computing and communications: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google for the commercialisation of search technology.
Few companies become so integrated into everyday life that their names become verbs, and none has done so as quickly as Google, which combined a superior method of ranking search results with an advertising-based business model to pay the bills. The firm is widely seen as the new Microsoft—which is both an accolade and a warning.
Energy and the environment: Stanford Ovshinsky, president and chief scientist and technologist, Energy Conversion Devices, for developing the nickel-metal-hydride battery
Mr Torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel in 1991, when he was a 21-year-old computer-science student at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He made the source code behind Linux freely available so that others could modify it to suit their needs, or contribute their own improvements. Linux now runs on millions of devices from handhelds to mainframes, and has attracted wide industry support.
Social and economic innovation: Victoria Hale, chairman and chief executive, Institute for OneWorld Health, for her work promoting the development of pharmaceuticals for the developing world
In 2000, Dr Hale founded the non-profit pharmaceutical company to develop treatments for “orphan” diseases neglected by traditional drugmakers. OneWorld develops drugs based on donated or royalty-free intellectual property, and is in final-stage testing of a promising new therapy to cure visceral leishmaniasis in India.
Business-process innovation: Alpheus Bingham, chairman, InnoCentive, for his work developing a web-based problem-solving community.
InnoCentive is an online forum that brings “solution seekers”, who post descriptions of technical problems they need to solve, together with “problem solvers” who try to solve them in order to win an associated bounty. Around $1.6m in potential rewards are currently listed on the innocentive.com website, which is used by over 80,000 researchers.
Consumer product: the iPod team at Apple for the development of the iPod digital-music player.
When Apple launched the iPod in October 2001, it was widely derided. Who would buy such an expensive device, and why did Apple think it could take on Sony? But Apple had the last laugh. The iPod became an iconic product, and Apple has stayed ahead of its rivals with further innovations such as the iTunes Music Store, the click wheel and video iPod.
No boundaries: Fujio Masuoka, professor, Tohoku University for the invention of flash memory.
In 1984, Dr Masuoka invented the low-cost, low-power, non-volatile storage technology that can today be found inside mobile phones, music players and many other devices. He is now suing Toshiba, his employer at the time, for $9m, which he believes is his fair share of the $180m the firm has earned from his work.
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