$25 Million in Breakthrough Prizes Given in Science and Math

The biggest prize payday in science came around again Sunday evening when the Breakthrough Foundation handed out more than $25 million in its annual prizes to more than a thousand physicists, life scientists and mathematicians.

Jean Bourgain, IBM von Neumann Professor in the School of Mathematics, has received the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, for “multiple transformative contributions to analysis, combinatorics, partial differential equations, high-dimensional geometry, and number theory.” Mohammed Abouzaid, current Visitor in the School of Mathematics, was among the four recipients of the 2017 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize awarded to promising early-career researchers who have already produced important work in mathematics. Two former Members of the Institute’s School of Natural Sciences, Andrew Strominger (1982–87) and Cumrun Vafa (1994), share the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with Joseph Polchinksi for transformative advances in quantum field theory, string theory, and quantum gravity. Additionally, three former Visitors in the School of Natural Sciences, Peter Graham (2008), Frans Pretorius (2012–13), and Xi Yin (2010), were awarded the 2017 New Horizons in Physics Prize.

Read more at the New York Times.