Milner Award – 2015
Laureates of the analog of the Nobel Prize from Yuri Milner are named
The ceremony of awarding the largest (in monetary terms) Breakthrough Prize scientific prize was held in the former NASA hangar in California. The award was established by Russian investor Yuri Milner, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma together with their wives. Unlike the Nobel Prize, the Breakthrough Prize is awarded to researchers who have just started their activities in science. This is reported by The New York Times (Breakthrough Prizes Give Top Scientists the Rock Star Treatment).
The current ceremony was attended by Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, singer Pharrell Williams, Russell Crowe and Hillary Swank.
Photo: Cornell University
The biomedical Prize was awarded to Karl Deisseroth and Edward S. Boyden for their contribution to the development of optogenetics, a technique for studying the work of nerve cells, which consists in introducing special channels into their membrane – opsins that respond to light excitation. This technique allows for fundamental research of the brain mechanisms.
Professor John Hardy, who studies neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer's disease, also received $ 3 million. It was he who, in the early 1980s, discovered a gene that, when inherited, condemns offspring to the appearance of this disease.
The biomedical Prize was awarded to Helen Hobbs, who studies cholesterol. Thanks to her discovery of the PCSK9 gene and its subsequent study, it was possible to create drugs that reduce cholesterol levels in humans, as well as the likelihood of a heart attack.
Finally, another prize in the field of life sciences was awarded to Professor Svante Paabo, who was one of the first to study Neanderthals, and subsequently played a major role in deciphering the genome of these ancient people. The main merit of the scientist is the confirmation that before the Neanderthals became extinct 40 thousand years ago, they mated with humans.
The Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics will be awarded to 1,300 people from five research groups who participated in the discovery of neutrino oscillations. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Canadian Arthur McDonald and Japanese Takaaki Kajita, who were considered the discoverers of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, the founders of Breakthrough Prize are sure that this discovery is the merit of a much larger number of people. In particular, they noted groups led by Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita, Nobel laureate Arthur B. McDonald, Chinese scientists led by Yifang Wang and Kam-Biu Luk, as well as two Japanese groups led by Atsuto Suzuki and Koichiro Nishikawa.
The winner of the Breakthrough Prize in mathematics was the American mathematician Ian Agol, who studies sets.
All this year's laureates will be included in a special committee that will determine who will receive the award in 2016.
In addition to the largest prizes of $3 million, the Milner Foundation also awards smaller New Horizons in Physics Prizes and New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes intended for young researchers. Zuckerberg is hosting the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which is attended by children from 13 to 18 years old.
The main goal of the award, as stated by its founder, is to popularize scientific research and give scientists the status of real stars. However, the Breakthrough Prize is often criticized for the fact that huge funds (more than $ 100 million has already been distributed, not counting fees to participants of the award ceremonies) could serve science better if they were spent on research projects or grants to needy scientists from poor countries of the planet.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
09.11.2015