news - 03.20.08

Foundation inaugurates the Arthur C. Clarke Prize

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ARTHUR C. CLARKE – A NEW PRIZE – FOR INNOVATION

A new Arthur C. Clarke Prize was presented for the first time on 20 March at Richard Huish Sixth Form College in Taunton, Somerset (UK) – the school where Clarke was a pupil from 1927 to 1935 (when it was the Huish Grammar School).  The Prize has been donated to the College by the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation and the first winner is 18-years-old James House, now studying electrical and mechanical engineering at Southampton University.

The College is now a leading educational establishment with over 1,800 pupils aged 16-18 from a wide area of the West of England and the facilities include an impressive Resource Centre which is named for Arthur C. Clarke. The criteria established by the Foundation for the new Prize is: 

To recognize a range of achievements at Sixth Form level which demonstrates outstanding qualities of innovation and imagination – in the footsteps of Arthur C. Clarke. These achievements should be shown to engender appreciation, understanding, and use of imagination in science, technology, the arts, and social policy.

The prize was presented at the annual College prize-giving event by the two UK-based Directors of the Foundation – Angie Edwards, Sir Arthur’s niece and Managing Director of Rocket Publishing, and Peter Marshall, a retired satellite industry executive. James House received a new inscribed marble trophy, based on the design of the monolith from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, together with a commemorative certificate, a signed copy of the latest Clarke book and a Bursary of $500.

James House was chosen as the first recipient by the senior staff of the College and the Citation read at the Prize Giving ceremony shows how closelty he fulfils our criteria:

James is that rare student who is equally comfortable with Arts and Sciences. He started college planning to do English, Art and Design and Media Studies alongside Computing and Photography and stated that 'he would love to be a novelist' if not a Graphic Designer. What he actually ended up doing, apart from English, Art and Computing (and achieved straight As in) were A Level Physics and Maths and AS level Biology… Now he is at Southampton studying Electromechanical Engineering with the intention of a career in robotics research or a related area.

At college James was a superb short story writer, one of which was short listed for the Brunner Creative Writing competition. He has flair, sensitivity to language and ideas in abundance. James shares a passion for Science Fiction with Arthur C Clarke and is an avid reader as well as would-be writer of his own stories. In his Physics lessons James would often ask how some Sci-Fi device, such as the space elevator, could be made in practice or how his own inventions could be turned into reality. He would be endlessly inventive about the possible applications of topics covered in his classes and had an exceptional imagination. This, combined with his communication skills and natural problem-solving ability, should make him an outstanding engineer of the future. James's intentions can perhaps best be expressed through what he himself has written in his UCAS form:  
'What all this comes back to is a desire to create things… and seeing machines that I have designed and built in action.’

After the prize-giving, and just 48 hours after the death of Sir Arthur, it was uncanny to discover that in addition to the range of achievements and interests listed above, James was also the son of a Somerset farmer, born in the village of Stoke St. Gregory just 10 miles east of the Clarke family farm where the young Arthur grew up. James is a quiet and modest young man, with huge talents and ambitions and the Foundation will be closely following his future career.

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