Breakthrough Prize

Breakthrough Prize 2021: Winners

Recipients

  1. Fundamental Physics

    Eric Adelberger, Jens H. Gundlach, Blayne Heckel

    Physics

    For precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy, and establish limits on couplings to dark matter.

  2. Life Sciences

    Catherine Dulac

    Biology

    for deconstructing the complex behavior of parenting to the level of cell-types and their wiring, and demonstrating that the neural circuits governing both male and female-specific parenting behaviors are present in both sexes.

  3. Life Sciences

    David Baker

    Biology

    for developing technology that allowed the design of proteins never seen before in nature, including novel proteins that have the potential for therapeutic intervention in human diseases.

  4. Life Sciences

    Richard J. Youle

    Biology

    for elucidating a quality control pathway that clears damaged mitochondria and thereby protects against Parkinson's Disease.

  5. Life Sciences

    Yuk Ming Dennis Lo

    Biology

    for discovering that fetal DNA is present in maternal blood and can be used for the prenatal testing of trisomy 21 and other genetic disorders

  6. Mathematics

    Martin Hairer

    Math

    for transformative contributions to the theory of stochastic analysis, particularly the theory of regularity structures in stochastic partial differential equations.