Three professors in the United States and Canada have won the 2008 Kyoto Prizes, worth about $465,500 each, Japan’s Inamori Foundation announced today.

Each prize, which also comes with a gold medal and a diploma, recognizes contributions to “the progress of science, the advancement of civilization, and the enrichment and elevation of the human spirit.”

Richard Manning Karp, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, will receive the prize in advanced technology for his contributions to the development of the theory of computational complexity. Mr. Karp started working in the field in the 1970s and established the theory of NP-completeness.

The winner of the life-sciences prize is Anthony James Pawson, a professor of medical genetics and microbiology at the University of Toronto. The award recognizes Mr. Pawson’s key work in signal transduction, or how cells use chemical signals to regulate one another’s behavior.

Charles Margrave Taylor, a professor emeritus at McGill University, in Montreal, is the winner of the prize in thoughts and ethics for his work in constructing a social philosophy that allows the coexistence of diverse cultures. Mr. Taylor also received the Templeton Award in 2007.

The prizes will be presented in Kyoto, Japan, on November 10. More information about the winners is available on the foundation’s Web site. —Maria José Viñas