Washington: The 2023 winners of the Breakthrough Prizes, dubbed the “Oscars of Science,” were announced on Thursday and will split a total of more than $15 million.
The Breakthrough Prizes, created in 2010 by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, are the most richly endowed awards in science, disbursing more than the Nobel prizes.
Three prizes were awarded this year in the life sciences category, one for mathematics and one for physics.
Each prize carries $3 million — more than the $1 million for a Nobel winner.
Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa have won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering the cause of narcolepsy, a lifelong disorder in which people suddenly fall asleep and experience extreme daytime drowsiness.
Mignot at Stanford University in California and Yanagisawa at the University of Tsukuba in Japan each discovered the mechanism behind narcolepsy independently.
“The laureates honoured today embody the remarkable power of fundamental science both to reveal deep truths about the Universe, and to improve human lives,” said Yuri Milner.
Milner, a venture capitalist, is one of the founders of the prize along with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, of Facebook and Sergey Brin of Google.
The Breakthrough Prize in mathematics was awarded to Daniel Spielman of Yale University for multiple discoveries in theoretical computer science and mathematics.
The prize in fundamental physics was shared by Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, David Deutsch and Peter Shor for their work in quantum information.
Clifford Brangwynne and Anthony Hyman won a life sciences prize for discovering a new mechanism of cellular organisation.
The other life sciences prizes were awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for developing AlphaFold, which predicts the structure of proteins.
