Dr. Grant Taylor, internationally esteemed physician, is a recipient of the Cosmopolis Award for his significant contribution to human understanding through Medicine.

Dr. Taylor served as the Director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan after World War II with extraordinary empathy and sensitivity which won the confidence and respect of the Japanese people. Dr. Taylor undertook the difficult and challenging assignment of an intensive study of the victims of one of the great horrors in the history of humankind in order to provide the scientific substantiation of the effects of radiation. Such proof has served to prevent the atomic bomb from being used again.

His experiences during this project made Dr. Taylor realize that the torn fabric of humankind had to be made whole again, and that human relationships were the best means. It was at this time that he suggested to his Japanese colleagues that there be an exchange between Japanese and American medical professionals and students.

The Japanese doctors wholeheartedly agreed to the soundness of his idea. Upon Dr. Taylor's return to the United States, his American colleagues also embraced the concept. To date, over 300 doctors have participated in this exchange at the University of Texas MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas. Today, many of Japan's leading doctors are products of this program.

The word health comes from the root holos, meaning whole, holy, heal. To heal literally means to make whole, this is, to unify the body with the soul, to return to a state of holiness. Dr. Taylor is a physician in the classic sense in that his healing power has nourished that sense of unity and concord we must find within ourselves to attain total health, both as an individual and as a society.
  

    
Ravi Shankar, legendary virtuoso sitarist and composer, is a recipient of the Cosmopolis Award for his significant contribution to human understanding through Music.

Ravi Shankar is India's most widely recognized and esteemed musical ambassador and has been a major cultural influence in the West for the past thirty years. Through his inspired performances of classical Indian music, Ravi Shankar has paved the way for the resurgence of interest in the rich cultural heritage of India.

A globally acclaimed musician, Ravi Shankar has experienced a unique success in interpreting the highly emotional and complex gamut of Indian compositions to Western audiences. As a roving ambassador of this native music, Ravi Shankar has toured Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and the Middle and Far East.

Mr. Shankar has composed extensively for film and the ballet in India, Europe, Canada, and the United States. His music for Richard Attenborough's "Ghandi" received worldwide critical acclaim. Ravi Shankar's duet compositions include works for violin and sitar which he has performed with Yehudi Menuhin.

Musician, composer, and conductor, Ravi Shankar is a member of the United Nations rostrum of composers and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Through music, Ravi Shankar is one of the great bridges between the cultures. With the strings of his sitar he has lassoed the world with love.

 
Sir Yehudi Menuhin, conductor, violinist, and teacher, is a recipient of the Cosmopolis Award for his significant contribution to human understanding through Music.

Sir Yehudi Menuhin, who made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 11, holds the Kennedy Center Honors (the highest distinction bestowed on American performing artists), is an honorary British citizen, and an honorary Swiss citizen. He is entitled to use the title of knighthood and is an honorary doctor of 15 universities worldwide. Sir Yehudi Menuhin was the youngest recipient of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his countless charity performances during and following World War II.

A dedicated educator, Yehudi Menuhin is the founder of the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, England, and of a second school for older students in Gstaad, Switzerland.

Yehudi Menuhin is among the few of the world's greatest musicians who have established and maintained an international reputation of absolute, unqualified integrity.

Throughout his life, Sir Yehudi Menuhin has been an ardent champion of global peace and communication through music. He has played a leading role in the cultivation of Western classical music in India and displayed his own fascination with Indian music through his collaborations with Ravi Shankar. He was the first Western musician to be made an honorary professor of the Beijing Conservatory of China.

Yehudi Menuhin continues to enrich the world with tireless dedication to myriads of philanthropic activities in his duel role as musician and world citizen. His genius through performing and his lifetime dedication to sharing, especially with children, symbolize his life.

Jonas Salk,  renowned American research physician-biologist, developer of the Salk Polio Vaccine, viewed biology not only as a science but as a basic cultural discipline with unifying potential for the relationships that exist between humankind and the physical universe, as well as between humankind and the sciences, arts, and humanities.

When Salk was in the process of searching for the anti-polio vaccine, he approached his problem in a poetic/scientific classic manner, one of total identity: he became the immune system, and then he became the virus.  “When I had the experience of seeing from many points of view, I could see and feel so much more,” said Salk.  “I then discovered what the words identification and empathy meant.”  In this manner of total identification, the problem and its solution were clarified, making Jonas Salk’s great contribution to humanity possible.  Because the Traditional classic approach to any problem is thinking and feeling simultaneously, Dr. Jonas Salk and his method had special significance for Wilhelm Scholê International.

In 1948 Salk undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.  Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers.  Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial.  When news of the vaccine's success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker."  His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When he was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: "There is no patent.  Could you patent the sun?"

In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. He continued to conduct research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason (1983). Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV.