The Win­ner of the 2012 Pe­ter Wildy Prize: Vin­cent Racaniello

by Elio

The win­ner of the 2012 Pe­ter Wildy Prize For Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy Ed­u­ca­tion is Vin­cent Racaniello of Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity, a fel­low blog­ger (Vi­rol­ogy Blog) and the pod­cast host of TWiV (This Week in Vi­rol­ogy), TWiP (This Week in Par­a­sitism), and TWiM (This Week in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy).

This prize is awarded an­nu­ally by the So­ci­ety for Gen­eral Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy (UK) for an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy ed­u­ca­tion, with­out re­stric­tion on the area of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy in which the award is made. This may in­clude uni­ver­sity teach­ing or ed­u­ca­tion of the gen­eral pub­lic, school pupils or pro­fes­sional groups. The win­ner re­ceives £1000 and gives a lec­ture on his/her work at a So­ci­ety meet­ing. Vincent's talk to the SGM was en­ti­tled Ed­u­cat­ing the World about Mi­crobes and can be heard by click­ing here.

Frankly, I can't think of any­one more de­serv­ing of this award. Vin­cent, with whom I have had the plea­sure of work­ing on TWiM, is a con­sum­mate mas­ter of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Sel­dom in my ex­pe­ri­ence have I met a sci­en­tist who can de­liver the plea­sures of sci­ence in such an ar­tic­u­late way. To lis­ten to him is to be­come en­thralled with what­ever it is he is talk­ing about. I can bear wit­ness to his fer­vor, his gen­tle­ness, his hu­mor. The French have an ex­pres­sion for it: un homme en­gagé (roughly trans­lated, a com­mit­ted man). Vin­cent is in­deed en­gagé!