2016 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics laureate, Ian Agol is a professor at the Department of Mathematics at UC Berkeley who was awarded the Breakthrough Prize for path-breaking contributions to low dimensional topology and geometric group theory, including work on the solutions of the tameness, virtual Haken and virtual fibering conjectures.
Angelika Amon is being recognized with the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for determining the consequences of aneuploidy, an abnormal chromosome number resulting from chromosome mis-segregation. She is a researcher at MIT and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where her lab focuses on the consequences of chromosome mis-segregation on cell and organismal physiology and how it leads to disease states such as cancer and aging.
Inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics recipient, Nima Arkani-Hamed of the Institute of Advanced Study is one of the leading particle physicists of his generation, whose insights have spanned quantum field theory, supersymmetry and string theory. He is also the Director of the Center for Future High Energy Physics in Beijing, which is designing a particle accelerator that would be the largest and most powerful ever built.
C. Frank Bennett of Ionis Pharmaceuticals was awarded the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (with Adrian R. Krainer) for the development of an effective antisense oligonucleotide therapy for children with the neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy, an often-fatal neurodegenerative disease.
The 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to Jocelyn Bell Burnell for her contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community. Previous recipients of this Special Prize include Stephen Hawking, the CERN scientists who led the discovery of the Higgs boson, and the LIGO collaboration that detected gravitational waves.
James Chen is a faculty member at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, whose lab studies how a cell detects harmful or foreign insults and mounts an appropriate response to restore homeostasis. He was awarded the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for elucidating how DNA triggers immune and autoimmune responses from the interior of a cell through the discovery of the DNA-sensing enzyme cGAS.
2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences laureate, Jennifer Doudna is widely known for pioneering the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing method. She is affiliated with Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry at UC Berkeley, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
John Hardy received the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering mutations in the amyloid precursor protein gene (APP) that cause early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, thus linking accumulation of APP-derived beta-amyloid peptide to Alzheimer’s pathogenesis and suggesting new approaches to risk assessment, prevention, and treatment. He is a researcher at University College London
Daniel Harlow received the 2019 New Horizons in Physics Prize (with Daniel L. Jafferis and Aron Wall). He is an assistant professor of physics at MIT, where he works on combining quantum mechanics and gravity, focusing on the quantum-mechanical aspects of black holes and cosmology.
Daniel L. Jafferis of Harvard University was awarded the 2019 New Horizons in Physics Prize (with Daniel Harlow and Aron Wall) for fundamental insights about quantum information, quantum field theory, and gravity.
The 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to Charles Kane (with Eugene Mele) for new ideas about topology and symmetry in physics, leading to the prediction of topological insulators, a new class of materials that conduct electricity only on their surface that promises future technological applications. He is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Adrian R. Krainer received the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (with C. Frank Bennett) for the development of an effective antisense oligonucleotide therapy for children with the neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy, an often-fatal neurodegenerative disease. He is a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics laureate Vincent Lafforgue has made major groundbreaking contributions to several areas of mathematics, in particular to the Langlands program in the function field case. He is affiliated with CNRS and InsJtut Fourier, Université Grenoble Alpes, where he is director of research.
Robert Langer is a bioengineer who has invented hundreds of devices and drugs for a wide range of medical uses. One of the most ingenious is a system for controlled drug release called the “pharmacy on a chip.” This is a pacemaker-sized device studded with dozens of microscopic wells containing a drug or combination of drugs.
Andrei Linde of Stanford University is an inaugural winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the development of inflationary cosmology, including the theories of new inflation, eternal chaotic inflation, and the inflationary Multiverse, and for contributing to the development of vacuum stabilization mechanisms in string theory.
Condensed-matter physicist Eugene Mele of the University of Pennsylvania received the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (with Charles Kane) for new ideas about topology and symmetry in physics, leading to the prediction of topological insulators, a new class of materials that conduct electricity only on their surface that promises future technological applications.
Kim Nasmyth of Oxford University was awarded the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer.
A 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences laureate, Gary Ruvkun received the prize for discovering a new world of genetic regulation by microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that inhibit translation or destabilize complementary mRNA targets.
Stanford’s Aron Wall received the 2019 New Horizons in Physics Prize (with Daniel L. Jafferis and Daniel Harlow) for fundamental insights about quantum information, quantum field theory, and gravity.
The 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences laureate, Xiaowei Zhuang was award the prize for discovering hidden structures in cells by developing super resolution imaging — a method that transcends the fundamental spatial resolution limit of light microscopy. She is affiliated with Harvard University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
