A groundbreaking award awards scientists $ 22 million and a star status

In an out-of-Hollywood scene, researchers and celebrities will gather in early November in a party richly adorned with choreography in a NASA shed at Ames to celebrate $ 22 million worth of awards. discovering mathematics, physics and life sciences.

The winners of the Breakthrough Award, announced Wednesday before the November 4th event, are among the best thinkers in their field.

Their discoveries include high-resolution imaging technologies, a new class of drugs, chromosomal diseases, innovations in cryptography and a new type of electrical conductive materials.

Prices are among the biggest gains in science. Designed by theoretical physicist and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation aims to create a cultural shift. If scientists are worn as celebrities, they will attract more public attention.

The Brainiacs will be celebrated in a prestigious, majestic and prestigious event, organized by actor Pierce Brosnan, where they will rub shoulders with movie stars and titans of technology. In previous years, guests included actors Morgan Freeman, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, as well as co-founder and CEO of Spotify, Daniel Elk, CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, co-founder of Udacity, Sebastian Thrum and George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic.

Since the creation of the Breakthrough Award in 2012, more than $ 200 million has been awarded to honor critical research.

The award is funded by Milner and his wife Julia, Chinese entrepreneur Ma Huateng and several titans of Silicon Valley technology: Anne Wojcicki, of 23andMe; Sergey Brin, Google CEO and Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, pediatrician at UC San Francisco.

Laureates in Life Sciences:

• C. Frank Bennett and Adrian R. Krainer of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, respectively, for the development of a therapy for children with neurodegenerative disease, dorsal muscular atrophy, a rare but devastating disease.
• Angelika Amon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for determining the consequences of an abnormal number of chromosomes, a disorder called aneuploidy.
• Xiaowei Zhuang of Harvard University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who discovered hidden structures in cells by developing super-resolution imaging, a method that transcends the limits of optical microscopy. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Berkeley and did postdoctoral studies at Stanford University.
• Zhijian "James" Chen of the Southwestern Medical Center of the University of Texas and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who learned how DNA triggers immune and autoimmune responses inside the body. ;a cell.

Laureate in fundamental physics:

• Charles Kane and Eugene Mele, of the University of Pennsylvania, for their new ideas on topology and symmetry in physics, which predict a new class of materials leading to electricity only on their surface.

Winner in maths:

• National Center for Scientific Research Vincent Lafforgue of Europe and Fourier Institute, University Grenoble Alpes, for their innovative contributions in several fields of mathematics, in particular the Langlands program in the case of the field of function.

In addition, there were six smaller "New Horizons" awards of $ 100,000 each for early career researchers in physics and mathematics. Aron Wall, 34, of the Stanford Institute of Theoretical Physics, is one of the recipients. He studies the thermodynamics of black holes and quantum gravity. He is the son of computer scientist Larry Wall, who created the Perl programming language.

Last month, the foundation announced the creation of a special award in Fundamental Physics, in recognition of British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell for her discovery of pulsars, a discovery recently announced in February 1968, and her scientific leadership. over the last five decades. She donated her $ 3 million to help women, ethnic minorities and refugees study physics.

Winners are chosen by a committee of winners from the previous year.

The ceremony will be broadcast live Sunday, November 4 at 19h. on National Geographic, and will be broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube on National Geographic TV (Facebook / YouTube) and the Breakthrough Prize (Facebook / YouTube).

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