L’Express, in partnership with Inetum, awarded the 2022 Personality Prizes on December 7, intended to reward those who have marked the year by their positions, their influence or their actions in various fields. The five Prizes were awarded by Laura Chaubard, Director General of the École polytechnique, the Italian writer Giuliano da Empoli, author of the novel “Le mage du Kremlin” and Grand Prix du roman of the French Academy, the lawyer Richard Malka, Inetum CEO Vincent Rouaix and Saint-Gobain CEO Benoît Bazin. For this first edition, the jury, made up of members of the editorial staff of L’Express, distinguished:
Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Ecological Transition Prize
The director of research at the Atomic Energy Commission, who is also co-chair of an IPCC working group, has become essential, alerting both to climate change and to the urgency to act. She was also ranked among the 100 most influential personalities in 2022 by the American magazine Time.
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Thomas Jonas, Tech Prize
The CEO and co-founder of Nature’s Fynd has been at the head of a start-up since 2014 that markets protein alternatives to meat and dairy products. This HEC graduate managed to seduce Bill Gates, Al Gore or Jeff Bezos, who participated in the various fundraisers for this plant nugget.
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`Andrei Kurkov, Europe Prize
The author of gray bees has become since the beginning of the war one of the most important Ukrainian voices in Europe. Since February 2022, the novelist who won the 2022 Medici Prize has stopped writing fiction, preferring to tell the story of the Russian invasion in the international press.
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Salman Rushdie, Freedom Prize
Targeted by a fatwa launched in 1989 following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, the American-British writer has become a symbol of the struggle for freedom of expression and against religious obscurantism. Salman Rushdie was seriously injured on August 12 in a knife attack as he prepared to give a conference in New York State.
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Hugo Duminil-Copin, Personality of the Year Grand Prize
Winner of the 2022 Fields Medal, the 37-year-old French mathematician has distinguished himself for his work in the field of probability, a field in full evolution and in interaction with many sciences. Already the winner of numerous international prizes, he has been a professor at the University of Geneva since 2014 and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques since 2016.
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These five personalities that L’Express has chosen to reward are each heroes in their own field. They hold high certain values, those that we defend in our columns, values that they have continued to grow in 2022 thanks to their commitment, their talent, but also their work and their courage. Congratulations and thank you to them!
Relive the awards ceremony: