Accessibility Statement Skip Navigation
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • +44 (0)20 7454 5110
  • Client Login
  • Send a Release
Return to PR Newswire homepage
  • News
  • Products
  • Contact
When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All Public Company News
      • All Multimedia News
      • View All News Releases

      • Regulatory News

      • D/A/CH Regulatory News
      • UK Regulatory News
      • View All Regulatory News

  • Business & Money
      • Auto & Transportation

      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads & Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking & Road Transportation
      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film & Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers & Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalisation
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Overseas Real Estate (non-US)
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls & Research
      • Trade Show News
      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil & Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Aerospace & Defence
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation & Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking & Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • Carriers & Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines & Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics & Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture & Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewellery
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film & Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • Amusement Parks & Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels & Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • Animal Welfare
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Economic News, Trends & Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • Labour & Union
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Public Safety
      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • View All People & Culture

  • Overview
  • Distribution
  • Paid Placement
  • Multimedia
  • Disclosure Services
  • SocialBoost
  • Rooms
    • MediaRoom
    • ESG Rooms
  • AI Tools
  • General Enquiries
  • Media Enquiries
  • Partnerships
  • Hamburger menu
  • Cision PR Newswire UK provides press release distribution, targeting, monitoring, and marketing services
  • Send a Release
    • Phone

    • +44 (0)20 7454 5110 from 8 AM - 5:30 PM GMT

    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Us

      +44 (0)20 7454 5110
      from 8 AM - 5:30 PM GMT

  • Client Login
  • Send a Release
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • News in Focus
    • Browse News Releases
    • Regulatory News
  • Business & Money
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
    • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Client Login
  • Send a Release
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Overview
  • Distribution
  • Paid Placement
  • Multimedia
  • Disclosure Services
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • AI Tools
  • Client Login
  • Send a Release
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • General Enquiries
  • Media Enquiries
  • Partnerships
  • Client Login
  • Send a Release
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists

Winners Of The 2021 Breakthrough Prizes In Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics And Mathematics Announced


News provided by

The Breakthrough Prize

10 Sep, 2020, 13:24 GMT

Share this article

Share toX

Share this article

Share toX

A Total of $18.75 Million Awarded For Advances on the Deepest Questions

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Awarded to David Baker, Catherine Dulac, Dennis Lo, Richard Youle

Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics Awarded to Martin Hairer

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach, Blayne Heckel

Six New Horizons Prizes Awarded for Early-Career Achievements in Physics and Math

Three Inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes Awarded to Women Mathematicians for Early-Career Achievements - Number of Prizes Increased Due to Popular Interest

   

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 and Blayne 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.

Urmila Mahadev
Caltech (PhD University of California, Berkeley 2018)

Citation: For work that addresses the fundamental question of verifying the output of a quantum computation.

Lisa Piccirillo 
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.

Related Links

http://breakthroughprize.org

Modal title

Also from this source

Breakthrough Prize Foundation Announces Student Winner of 10th Annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge Science Video Competition

Breakthrough Prize Foundation Announces Student Winner of 10th Annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge Science Video Competition

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation today announced Singapore-based Jasmine Eyal as winner of the 10th annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a global...

BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE ANNOUNCES 2025 LAUREATES IN LIFE SCIENCES, FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS, AND MATHEMATICS

BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE ANNOUNCES 2025 LAUREATES IN LIFE SCIENCES, FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS, AND MATHEMATICS

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation today announced the winners of the 2025 Breakthrough Prizes, honoring scientists driving remarkable discoveries in...

More Releases From This Source

Explore

STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)

STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)

Computer & Electronics

Computer & Electronics

Awards

Awards

Not For Profit

Not For Profit

News Releases in Similar Topics

Contact PR Newswire

  • +44 (0)20 7454 5110
    from 8 AM - 5:30 PM GMT
  • General Enquiries
  • Media Enquiries
  • Partnerships

Products

  • Content Distribution
  • Multimedia Services
  • Disclosure Services
  • Cision Communications Cloud®

About

  • About PR Newswire
  • About Cision
  • Partnering Opportunities
  • Careers
  • APAC
  • APAC - Simplified Chinese
  • APAC - Traditional Chinese
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Czech
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Israel
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Mexico
  • Middle East
  • Middle East - Arabic
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Russia
  • Slovakia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • United States
  • Vietnam

My Services

  • All News Releases
  • Customer Portal
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Data Privacy

Do not sell or share my personal information:

  • Submit via Privacy@cision.com 
  • Call Privacy toll-free: 877-297-8921

Contact PR Newswire

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Customer Portal
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
+44 (0)20 7454 5110
from 8 AM - 5:30 PM GMT
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Information Security Policy
  • Site Map
  • RSS
  • Cookie Settings
Copyright © 2025 PR Newswire Europe Limited. All Rights Reserved. A Cision company.