Prestigious "Oscars of Science" will make star researchers

Nine scientists were awarded on Wednesday with a "Silicon Valley Award", a Silicon Valley-funded $ 3 million award designed to elevate prestige and prestige in the manner of Oscars in the basic sciences.

The prizes in physics, life sciences and mathematics were awarded to six men and three women, including four researchers who shared two awards and five who were fully rewarded.

Vincent Lafforgue, from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), received the mathematics prize for his innovative work in many fields.

Among the five US researchers who have won life science awards are Frank Bennett and Adrian Krainer from Carlsbad, California and Long Island.

They have been recognized for their discovery of a process related to DNA that has led to treatment for a rare childhood disorder, spinal muscular atrophy.

Scientists of Chinese origin, Xiaowei Zhuang (Harvard), have come up with a new super-resolution molecular imaging tool, and Zhijian "James" Chen (University of Texas), for his discovery of 39, a DNA detection enzyme that could be associated with autoimmune disorders.

Angelika Amon, an Austrian researcher at MIT, completed the US-based contingent to determine the consequences of aneuploidy when the cell does not have the normal number of chromosomes.

Physics awards went to Charles Kane and Eugene Mele (University of Pennsylvania) and Jocelyn Bell Burnell (Oxford).

Six prizes of $ 100,000 were awarded to 12 researchers for promising early work.

The "Breaking Price" is only six years old, but it is much more sumptuous than the coveted Nobel Prize, endowed with a prize of about $ 1 million and often shared by two or three laureates.

Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony celebrated on the red carpet in November, hosted at a NASA research center in Silicon Valley by actor Pierce Brosnan.

The math prize propels Lafforgue, 44, into a world of celebrities that is not usually part of his daily work, he acknowledged.

"I'm leaving," he told AFP before the official announcement. "It's the American culture."

He recalled that Yuri Milner, physician and pioneer of the internet, became a leading investor in Silicon Valley, had created the award in 2012 to embody the scientists, in the hope of repopularizing the basic sciences and generate public support.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Google Sergey Brin, and Ma Huateng, founder and CEO of Chinese Internet giant Tencent, are among the sponsors of the "Breakthrough Award".

Unlike the Nobel Prize, which often goes to retirees, the "Decisive Award" aims to recognize recent discoveries, not necessarily concrete applications of their work.

"We do mathematics for its beauty, not for its applications," said Lafforgue, while pointing out that his work had applications in the field of cryptography.

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