Recipients of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, announced in June, are Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University and Imperial College, London, Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Terence Tao of UCLA and Richard Taylor of the Institute for Advanced Study.
Doudna and Charpentier received the award for their discovery of a revolutionary DNA-editing technique that has upended the world of genetics, finally making possible dreams of gene therapy. The prize announcement lauded them “for harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful and general technology for editing genomes, with wide-ranging implications across biology and medicine.”
Perlmutter accepted the award on behalf of the Supernova Cosmology Project team, while Riess and Schmidt accepted on behalf of the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which in 1998 simultaneously discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe and dark energy. Riess was a Miller postdoctoral fellow working with astronomy professor Alex Filippenko when the cosmological results were announced. Filippenko was the only person to have been a member of both teams.
Doudna, who holds the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences, is a professor of molecular and cell biology and chemistry as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist. Perlmutter holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair in Physics at UC Berkeley and is a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The annual Breakthrough Prizes, which include a trophy and $3 million to each laureate in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics, are sponsored by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, a founder of the genetics company 23andMe; Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma and his wife, Cathy Zhang; Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and his wife, Julia; and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. The goal is to celebrate scientists and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career.
The ceremony was produced and directed by Emmy Award-winning Don Mischer Productions and will be simulcast in the United States on Discovery Channel and Science Channel on November 15 at 6 PM ET/PT, and televised globally the weekend of November 22 on BBC World News.
The Supernova Cosmology Project Team Breakthrough Prize winners: Greg Aldering, Brian J. Boyle, Patricia G. Castro, Warrick J. Couch, Susana Deustua, Richard S. Ellis, Sebastien Fabbro, Alexei V. Filippenko, Andrew S. Fruchter, Ariel Goobar, Donald E. Groom, Isobel M. Hook, Mike Irwin, Alex G. Kim, Matthew Y. Kim, Robert A. Knop, Julia C. Lee, Chris Lidman, Thomas Matheson, Richard G. McMahon, Richard Muller, Heidi J. M. Newberg, Peter Nugent, Nelson J. Nunes, Reynald Pain, Nino Panagia, Carl R. Pennypacker, Robert Quimby, Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente, Bradley E. Schaefer and Nicholas Walton.
The High-Z Supernova Search Team Breakthrough Prize winners: Peter Challis, Alejandro Clocchiatti, Alan Diercks, Alexei V. Filippenko, Peter M. Garnavich, Ron L. Gilliland, Craig J. Hogan, Saurabh Jha, Robert P. Kirshner, Bruno Leibundgut, Mark M. Phillips, David Reiss, R. Chris Smith, Jason Spyromilio, Christopher Stubbs, Nicholas B. Suntzeff and John Tonry.
NOTE: This article has been changed to reflect the fact that the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to two teams who independently discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, not solely to the leaders of the teams, as originally reported.
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