Nokia Foundation awarded the founder of Wikipedia
Lehtikuva/ Heikki Saukkomaa Jimmy Wales is also the co-founder of Wikia.comThe Nokia Foundation has granted its 2009 award to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the free, multilingual encyclopedia. Wales was awarded for his contributions to the evolution of the World Wide Web as a participatory and truly democratic platform.
The EUR 10,000 award was presented at the Nokia Foundation scholarship awards ceremony on 4 November, 2009.
– It's a great honor to present this award on behalf of the Board of the Nokia Foundation to an individual who we believe has made a unique contribution to accelerating online collaboration and interaction for millions of people around the world, and effectively democratizing information sharing, said Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center and Chairman of the Board of the Nokia Foundation.
Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference web sites, so far attracting an average of more than 330 million monthly visitors this year. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 14,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages.
This year, the Nokia Foundation also awarded 77 scholarships with a total value of EUR 385,000. All scholarships were granted to post-graduate students to support the completion of their doctorate studies in the field of information and data communications technology.
The Nokia Foundation was formed in 1995 to support the scientific development of information and telecommunications technologies and to promote education of the sector in Finland. Decisions are made by the board of the foundation, which consists of four representatives from Finnish universities and three representatives of Nokia. Nokia Foundation is not part of Nokia Corporation.
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