Your Eminence,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Distinguished guests from Cyprus and abroad.

It is a great honour and joy to be here today to award a renowned compatriot, an important Cypriot scientist, whose contribution to global science honours our country and is recognized internationally by the most important scientific centres.

As President of the Republic I feel great pride when Cypriots emigrating abroad in search of a better life manage not only to develop and progress, but also to excel and honour our country at the highest levels of the arts and sciences.

Tonight we are honoured to award one such brilliant scientist, who in 1964 emigrated to England to continue his studies and since then has been developing and progressing, providing invaluable service to the global community and particularly to medicine.

We are called upon to award the Takis and Louki Nemitsas Foundation Prize in Chemistry to the distinguished Professor Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou, whose great astuteness and personality steered him from Karavas village in Kyrenia to the highest positions of several major research and academic institutions in the United States of America.

I understand that Mr Nicolaou’s forte is the total synthesis, a specialization in the field of organic chemistry, which aims to replicate in the laboratory the molecules of living nature from simple, commercially available materials.

From these molecules important pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, vitamins, textile materials are discovered as well as high-tech materials that benefit society in countless ways.

The most well-known of the scientific achievements of Mr Nicolaou are the total syntheses of the anticancer drugs Taxol and Calicheamicin. The first, indeed, is the most widely used anticancer drug today.

For the great and continuous success of our distinguished compatriot, we have been informed by other speakers, who are experts in this field. I will only add that this prominent Cypriot scientist is also a gifted teacher, who has inspired students around the world, his scientific contributions are described in over 760 publications and more than 60 patents and has received dozens of awards and honorary distinctions worldwide.

Dear friends,

We are proud because people like Kyriakos Nicolaou go beyond the narrow borders of our homeland and promote our country’s intellectual merits across the world. We warmly thank him for that. Awarding these people at home is the minimum honour that we can give in return.

We must also express our warmest thanks to the ‘Takis and Louki Nemitsa’ Foundation because with its contribution and action it brings to the forefront and rewards our deserving and distinguished compatriots all over the world. Such initiatives confirm our people’s greatness and generosity, as well as our will to be useful and beneficial to our homeland and the world.

Since its establishment, the ‘Takis and Louki Nemitsa’ Foundation awards Cypriot scientists who come up, through their studies and research, with inventions, discoveries or improvements that “bring great benefit to Cyprus and the entire world at large”, as provided by its articles of association.

I would also like to note that the Foundation’s Board of Directors operates pro bono and selflessly, and the same goes for the Academic Board, the Secretary and the Coordinator of the Foundation, as well as for the rest of the committees that are set up. Their contribution is invaluable.

The difficult times that our country is going through render such activities a valuable aid in the efforts to reconstruct the economy and regroup our forces in order to deal with the adverse circumstances we are facing.

Unfortunately, the economic crisis has brought about a serious blow to the entire spectrum and range of Cypriot society, and has had very adverse consequences for foundations, organisations, citizens and also the State. The State’s economic possibilities have been dramatically reduced, but its intention to contribute to the continuation of such institutions, like the one we are attending tonight, must be considered as granted.

I thank you for the self-confidence that you inspire in us. I thank the Nemitsas Foundation for its contribution and Kyriakos Nicolaou for making us so proud.

I warmly congratulate you.