The Takeda Foundation, is an organisation based in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. In 2001 it launched an annual awards program, which presented awards accompanied by 100 million yen under the categories social/economic well-being, individual/humanity well-being, and world environmental well-being.

Social/Economic Well-Being

The technical achievement honored by the Takeda Award 2001 Techno-Entrepreneurial Achievements for Social/Economic Well-Being was "the origination and the advancement of open development models for system software - open architecture, free software and open source software."

Ken Sakamura Ken Sakamura is a Japanese professor in Information science at the University of Tokyo. He is the creator of the real-time operating system architecture TRON.In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds....  (University of Tokyo University of Tokyo , abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university... )	For developing and promoting the TRON open architecture, a real-time operating system specification for embedded systems
Richard Stallman Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...  (Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software... )	For starting the free software movement and leading the development of the GNU operating system
Linus Torvalds Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...  (Transmeta Corporation)	For developing the Linux operating system kernel by the open source process for software development

Individual/Humanity Well-Being

The technical achievement honored by the Takeda Award 2001 Techno-Entrepreneurial Achievements for Individual/Humanity Well-Being was "development of a large-scale genome sequencing system by establishing 'the whole genome shotgun strategy' that utilizes modularized data acquisition system and high-throughput DNA sequencers."

Michael W. Hunkapiller (Applied Biosystems)	For his contribution to the development of the automated high-throughput DNA sequencers and the promotion of the foundation of Celera Genomics
J. Craig Venter (Celera Genomics)	For the foundation of Celera Genomics and the development of "the whole genome shotgun strategy".

World/Environmental Well-Being

The technical achievement honored by the Takeda Award 2001 Techno-Entrepreneurial Achievements for World Environmental Well-Being is "the development and promotion of the Ecological Rucksacks and Material Input per Unit Service (MIPS) concepts, as measures of the ecological stress of products and services."

Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek (Factor 10 Institute)

for developing and promoting the Ecological Rucksacks and Material Input per Unit of Service (MIPS) concepts.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker is a German scientist and politician.He is son of the physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and nephew of the former German President Richard von Weizsäcker....  (Founding President of the Wuppertal Institute Wuppertal Institute The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy is a German research institution that explores and develops models, strategies and instruments to support sustainable development at local, national and international level. Sustainability research at the Wuppertal Institute focuses on... )

For his contribution in refining and promoting the Ecological Rucksacks and Material Input per Unit Service (MIPS) concepts.

The awards were suspended in 2003 due to financial constraints, with the hope that they could be restarted if/when the Takeda Foundation's financial situation improves. http://www.takeda-foundation.jp/en/topics/press/030707.html

As well as the above awards, also in 2001 and 2002 they presented the Techno-Entrepreurship Award, and the Takeda Scholarship Award.

Social/Economic Well-Being

Isamu Akasaki Isamu Akasaki is a Japanese scientist, best known for inventing p-n junction blue LEDs using gallium nitride as early as 1989.-Blue LEDs:Akasaki was born in Kagoshima Prefecture in 1929, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1952 from Kyoto University. He received his PhD degree in Electronics from...  (Meijo University Meijo University is a private university in Japan. Its main campus is in Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi and it has a satellite campus in Kani, Gifu.- History :The name Meijō derives itself from the abbreviated kanji form of .... ) (25%)	For development of the blue light-emitting diode Light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting...  and blue laser diode Laser diode The laser diode is a laser where the active medium is a semiconductor similar to that found in a light-emitting diode. The most common type of laser diode is formed from a p-n junction and powered by injected electric current...
Hiroshi Amano (Meijo University Meijo University is a private university in Japan. Its main campus is in Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi and it has a satellite campus in Kani, Gifu.- History :The name Meijō derives itself from the abbreviated kanji form of .... ) (25%)
Shuji Nakamura Shuji Nakamura is a professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara .- Career :Nakamura graduated from the University of Tokushima in 1977 with a degree in electronic engineering, and obtained a master's degree in the same subject two years later, after...  (University of California, Santa Barbara University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los... ) (50%)

Individual/Humanity Well-Being

Patrick O. Brown Patrick O. Brown Patrick O. "Pat" Brown M.D., Ph.D., born 1954 in Washington, DC, is a Professor of biochemistry at Stanford University. He got his B.S., M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His research uses DNA microarrays to study the gene expression patterns associated with especially cancer...  (Stanford University Stanford University The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San... , Howard Hughes Medical Institute Howard Hughes Medical Institute Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United... )

For development and promotion of DNA microarray DNA microarray A DNA microarray is a collection of microscopic DNA spots attached to a solid surface. Scientists use DNA microarrays to measure the expression levels of large numbers of genes simultaneously or to genotype multiple regions of a genome... s

Stephen P. A. Fodor (Affymetrix Affymetrix Affymetrix is a company that manufactures DNA microarrays; it is based in Santa Clara, California, United States. The company was founded by Dr. Stephen Fodor in 1992. It began as a unit in Affymax N.V... )

World/Environmental Well-Being

Charles Elachi Charles Elachi Charles Asshur Al-Wadad Elachi is the Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , located in Pasadena, California. He has held this position since May 1, 2001 and also holds professorships in electrical engineering and planetary science at Caltech....  (Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena... , California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering... )	For development of Spaceborne Microwave Radar for Monitoring the Global Environment
Nobuyoshi Fugono (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International)
Ken'ichi Okamoto (Osaka Prefecture University Osaka Prefecture University , also abbreviated to , is one of the largest public universities in Japan. The main campus is among big Kofun tombs in Sakai, Osaka.- History :... )