SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The Breakthrough Prize Foundation today announced the esteemed recipients of the 2021 Breakthrough Prize, recognizing a spectacular array of groundbreaking achievements in the Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics. Each year, the Prize is celebrated at a gala award ceremony, where the awards are presented by superstars of movies, music, sports and tech entrepreneurship. Due to the global pandemic, however, this year’s ceremony has been postponed until March 2021.
At a time when the importance of scientific achievement resounds around the world with more urgency than ever, the Breakthrough Prize continues its nine-year tradition of honoring the most profound and transformative discoveries, celebrating both established researchers (Breakthrough Prize) as well as early-career scientists (New Horizons Prize and – for the first time this year – Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize).
In total for this year, the Breakthrough Prize is awarding a collective $18.75 million in support of scientists working on the biggest and most fundamental questions. Science’s largest prize, the Breakthrough Prize has honored more researchers with monetary awards than any other science prize, with more than $250 million being awarded to almost 3000 leading scientists since 2012. The Prize is intended to help scientific leaders gain freedom from financial constraints to focus fully on the world of ideas; to raise the profile and prestige of basic science and mathematics, fomenting a culture in which intellectual pursuits are validated; and to inspire the next generation of researchers to follow the lead of these extraordinary scientific role models.
This year’s Breakthrough Prize winners form a diverse group. They’ve invented tools to unravel the protein folding problem and design entirely novel proteins (including some that could neutralize Covid-19); built exquisitely sensitive table-top instruments to probe the mysteries of dark energy and put Einstein’s theory to the test; developed noninvasive genetic fetal screening tests used by millions of prospective parents worldwide; mapped the neural pathways governing parenting behavior to the level of specific brain cells; revealed and elaborated a cellular pathway heavily implicated in hereditary Parkinson’s disease; and cracked equations describing random processes, from fluctuating stock prices to the motion of sugar in a cup of tea. Each Breakthrough Prize is worth $3 million.
Six New Horizons Prizes of $100,000 each were shared among twelve early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields. And three inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes were awarded to early-career women mathematicians – the number of awards increased from one to three due to the intense interest generated by the Prize and the extremely high quality of nominations. The Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize was established in 2019 and named for the famed Iranian mathematician, Fields Medalist and Stanford professor who passed away in 2017. During her exceptionally prolific career, Mirzakhani made groundbreaking contributions to the theory of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. Each year, the $50,000 New Frontiers Prize award is presented to women mathematicians who have completed their PhDs within the past two years.
Full citations can be found below.
2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (4)
David Baker
University of Washington and Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Citation: For developing technology that allowed the design of proteins never seen before in nature, including novel proteins that have the potential for therapeutic intervention in human diseases.
Catherine Dulac
Harvard University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Citation: For deconstructing the complex behavior of parenting to the level of cell-types and their wiring, and demonstrating that the neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors are present in both sexes.
Yuk Ming Dennis Lo
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Citation: For discovering that fetal DNA is present in maternal blood and can be used for the prenatal testing of trisomy 21 and other genetic disorders.
Richard J. Youle
National Institutes of Health
Citation: For elucidating a quality control pathway that clears damaged mitochondria and thereby protects against Parkinson’s Disease.
2021 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics (1)
Martin Hairer
Imperial College London
Citation: For transformative contributions to the theory of stochastic analysis, particularly the theory of regularity structures in stochastic partial differential equations.
2021 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (1)
Eric Adelberger, Jens H. Gundlach andBlayne Heckel
University of Washington
Citation: For precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy, and establish limits on couplings to dark matter.
2021 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize (3)
Bhargav Bhatt
University of Michigan
Citation: For outstanding work in commutative algebra and arithmetic algebraic geometry, particularly on the development of p-adic cohomology theories.
Aleksandr Logunov
Princeton University
Citation: For novel techniques to study solutions to elliptic equations, and their application to long-standing problems in nodal geometry.
Song Sun
University of California, Berkeley
Citation: For many groundbreaking contributions to complex differential geometry, including existence results for Kahler-Einstein metrics and connections with moduli questions and singularities.
2021 New Horizons in Physics Prize (3)
Tracy Slatyer
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Citation: For major contributions to particle astrophysics, from models of dark matter to the discovery of the “Fermi Bubbles.”
Rouven Essig
Stony Brook University
Javier Tiffenberg
Fermilab
Tomer Volansky
Tel Aviv University
Tien-Tien Yu
University of Oregon
Citation: For advances in the detection of sub-GeV dark matter especially in regards to the SENSEI experiment.
Ahmed Almheiri
Institute for Advanced Study
Netta Engelhardt
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Henry Maxfield
University of California, Santa Barbara
Geoff Penington
University of California, Berkeley
Citation: For calculating the quantum information content of a black hole and its radiation.
2021 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize (3)
Nina Holden
ETH Zurich (PhD MIT 2018)
Citation: For work in random geometry, particularly on Liouville Quantum Gravity as a scaling limit of random triangulations.
UrmilaMahadev
Caltech (PhD University of California, Berkeley 2018)
Citation: For work that addresses the fundamental question of verifying the output of a quantum computation.
LisaPiccirillo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD University of Texas at Austin 2019)
Citation: For resolving the classic problem that the Conway knot is not smoothly slice.
About the Breakthrough Prize
For the ninth year the Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the “Oscars of Science,” will recognize the world’s top scientists. Each prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences (up to four per year), Fundamental Physics (one per year) and Mathematics (one per year). In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics Prizes, up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes and up to three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes are given out to early-career researchers each year. Laureates attend a gala award ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and inspire the next generation of scientists. As part of the ceremony schedule, they also engage in a program of lectures and discussions.
The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. The Prizes have been sponsored by the personal foundations established by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Jack Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner and Anne Wojcicki. Selection Committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field choose the winners. Information on Breakthrough Prize is available at breakthroughprize.org.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
