2016 Breakthrough Prizes announced
1 Dec 2015 by Evoluted New Media
The winners of the 2016 Breakthrough Prizes – worth $22 million in total (£15 million) – in life sciences, fundamental physics and maths have been announced at a live ceremony in Silicon Valley in the US.
The winners of the 2016 Breakthrough Prizes – worth $22 million in total (£15 million) – in life sciences, fundamental physics and maths have been announced at a live ceremony in Silicon Valley in the US.
The 2016 prize in Life Sciences was awarded to five individual recipients including John Hardy from University College London for his discoveries concerning mutations in the Amyloid Precursor Protein gene linked to early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The prize in Fundamental Physics went to seven leaders and 1370 members of five experiments investigating neutrino oscillation including two physicists from Oxford University for their roles in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Ian Agol from the University of California at Berkeley received the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for his contributions to the geometric group theory.
The Breakthrough Prize – founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan – aims to celebrate science and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career. Mark Zuckerberg said: “By challenging conventional thinking and expanding knowledge over the long term, scientists can solve the biggest problems of our time. The Breakthrough Prize honours achievements in science and math so we can encourage more pioneering research and celebrate scientists as the heroes they truly are.”Breakthrough Prize laureates in Fundamental Physics, the Life Sciences and Mathematics are awarded a $3 million (~£2 million) prize. Winners are chosen by selection committees, comprised of prior Breakthrough Prize laureates. Prizes worth up to $100,000 (£66,000) were also given to promising young students and researchers for their achievements in science.
“Breakthrough Prize laureates are making fundamental discoveries about the Universe, life and the mind. These fields of investigation are advancing at an exponential pace, yet the biggest questions remain to be answered,” said Yuri Milner.
