The 2019 Breakthrough Prizes, totaling $22 million, have been awarded to scientists around the world for their work in physics, biology and mathematics. The discoveries these awards celebrate have helped illuminate the inner workings of human cells, as well as expand our knowledge of the universe.
Seven prizes, each worth $3 million, go to nine scientists. C. Frank Bennett at Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Adrian R. Krainer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory share a prize for developing a therapy for children with spinal muscular atrophy, the leading genetic cause of infant death. It is the first drug that treats the disease, and it uses chemically modified polymers to mimic the splicing action of RNA.
Angelika Amon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology takes a prize for showing how having an irregular number of chromosomes – which can lead to Down Syndrome or certain cancers – can throw off a cell’s own repair system and lead to a cascade of genetic mutations.
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Quantum computers and pulsars
Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University received her prize for developing a method to see cellular structure with unprecedented high resolution. She is using this technique to make an atlas of all the cells in the body. Zhijian Chen at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center was awarded a Breakthrough Prize for discovering how our immune response works, with DNA kick-starting the process by oozing out of a cell’s nucleus and triggering a protein that activates disease-fighting T-cells.
The Breakthrough Prize in mathematics goes to Vincent Lafforgue at the Institute Fourier in France, for discoveries in number theory that undergird cryptography. Charles Kane and Eugene Mele at the University of Pennsylvania were awarded the prize in fundamental physics for mathematical work that predicted the existence of materials called topological insulators, which conduct electricity only on their surface and could be useful for building quantum computers.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell was awarded a special Breakthrough Prize for her discovery of pulsars more than 50 years ago. This is the fourth time the special award has been given since it was established.
Six prizes worth $100,000 were also awarded to early career researchers in physics and mathematics. This includes a team working on detectors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), an experiment that recorded evidence of gravitational waves emanating from a black hole merger. Researchers working on quantum field theory, neutron star signals, number theory and linear algebra were also recognised.
