The Breakthrough Prize has announced its 2024 laureates and awarded a total of $15.75 million to this year’s winners. Some of the world’s most brilliant minds have received prizes for work in oncology, quantum field theories, and differential geometry.
Yuri Milner (author of Eureka Manifesto) is one of the founding sponsors of the Breakthrough Prize. His Breakthrough Foundation, which helps support the awards, also funds the Breakthrough Junior Challenge and the Breakthrough Initiatives.
Major Prizes for Scientists and Mathematicians
Each year, the Breakthrough Prize celebrates the amazing discoveries of established scientists and mathematicians. Winners of the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics receive $3 million in rewards.
The Breakthrough Prize also recognizes the work of early-career researchers with $50,000 and $100,000 prizes.
Here are eight of the world’s top emerging and established researchers who have received Breakthrough Prizes this year.
Laura Monk
Laura Monk is one of three women to win a Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize. The prize recognizes the work of women mathematicians who have recently completed their PhDs. Monk gained her PhD in 2021 from the University of Strasbourg, and she now works at the University of Bristol.
Monk received the prize for her discoveries in hyperbolic geometry. In particular, her work has advanced our understanding of random hyperbolic surfaces of large genus.
Michael Johnson and Alexandru Lupsasca
Early-career physicists Michael Johnson and Alexandru Lupsasca won one of three New Horizons in Physics Prizes. The prize recognizes the importance of their studies of photon rings (light trapped in orbit around black holes).
The prize also honored Johnson and Lupsasca’s work for showing how next-generation interferometric experiments may one day detect photon rings.
Carl June and Michel Sadelain
Carl June and Michel Sadelain won a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing a new cancer treatment.
The duo genetically engineered T cells (vital cells in our immune systems) with synthetic receptors named chimeric antigen receptors (CARs). Introduced to a patient’s bloodstream, these modified CAR T cells can recognize and destroy cancer cells. CAR T therapy can have remarkable rates of success against liquid cancers like lymphoma and leukemia.
Angkana Rüland
Angkana Rüland, from the University of Bonn, is one of three early-career mathematicians to receive a New Horizons in Mathematics Prize. The prize acknowledges Rüland’s work in applied analysis — specifically, her analysis of microstructures in solid-solid phase transitions and the theory of inverse problems.
John Cardy and Alexander Zamolodchikov
John Cardy and Alexander Zamolodchikov won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for contributing a lifetime of profound insights into statistical physics and quantum field theories. Quantum field theory encompasses principles that combine elements of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Discover the full list of 2024 Breakthrough Prize winners.
About Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Foundation
Yuri Milner and his wife Julia established the Breakthrough Foundation in 2012 to support their Giving Pledge. The Breakthrough Foundation supports the Breakthrough Prize, which celebrates leading researchers in science and mathematics.
The Breakthrough Foundation also invests in innovative space science programs in the form of the Breakthrough Initiatives. Launched in 2015, the Breakthrough Initiatives are a set of five multi-million-dollar projects. The Breakthrough Initiatives include the research and engineering programs Listen, Watch, and Starshot.
On top of this, the Breakthrough Foundation helps spread scientific ideas to the next generation through the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
Also created in 2015, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a global science video competition for students aged 13-18. The Breakthrough Junior Challenge takes place annually and offers winners life-changing educational prizes.
The Breakthrough Foundation also supports Julia and Yuri Milner’s non-profit initiative Tech For Refugees.
