The Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement is an award for success in various fields of academia, named after deceased Vietnam veteran Eugene R. Gannon Jr. The award has one finalist in each of the fields of philosophy, arts or humanities, and mathematics or natural sciences, and then selects a single winner. A cash prize is donated to the charity of the winner's choice.

The 2009 recipient was Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...

, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

. Bostrom selected the Future of Humanity Institute as the recipient of The Gannon Award's cash prize. The other finalists were Kwame Appiah, professor of cultural theory at Princeton, and Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York.

The 2010 recipient was Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.-Study and career:From 1967 to 1974 Rosling...

, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and Director of the Gapminder Foundation

Gapminder Foundation

Gapminder Foundation is a non-profit venture registered in Stockholm, Sweden, that promotes sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and...

, which developed the Trendalyzer

Trendalyzer

Trendalyzer is an information visualization software for animation of statistics that was initially developed by Hans Rosling's Gapminder Foundation in Sweden. In March 2007 it was acquired by Google Inc....

software system. Rosling selected the Gapminder Foundation as the recipient of The Gannon Award's cash prize.