The awards ceremony will take place in June during the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. The prize of 30 million rubles (almost $900,000) will be split among the winners.
At the press conference in Moscow, Smirnov announced that the winner of the first award was Brian Spalding, a former professor of heat transfer at Imperial College London and founder of a company specializing in computational fluid dynamics.
Smirnov said that Spalding had won the award for "numerous original conceptions in the processes of heat and mass transfer, which have become the basis for practical calculations in the mechanics of liquid agents."
The second award was given to two renowned Russian scientists, Alexei Kontorovich and Nikolai Laverov, for "fundamental research and wide exploitation of prospecting techniques, investigation and development of oil, gas and uranium fields and the scientific basis for the discovery of raw energy materials in large areas," Smirnov said.
In 2009, more than 1,500 people were nominated for the main energy prize. Smirnov said that the entry rules for the award have now been changed and he expects the number of entrants to increase significantly.
