The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics is a scientific award, funded by Sergey Brin of Google; internet entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook; entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner; and Anne Wojcicki, one of the founders of the genetics company 23andMe.[1]
Since its establishment, the prize has been awarded to numerous scientists across the globe for their major contributions and discoveries in their respective scientific fields. Laureates receive $3 million each in prize money making it the largest awarded in the sciences.[2] From 2013 to 2024, it has been awarded to sixteen female scientists including two special and one posthumous recognitions, and three of whom were eventually awarded a Nobel Prize for their work: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2019 for Chemistry, and Katalin Karikó in 2023 for Physiology or Medicine.
| Year | Field | Portrait | Citation Laureate | Nationality | Motivations | Institute | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Life Sciences | data-sort-value="Bargmann" | Cornelia Bargmann (born 1961) | "for the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost molecules." | Rockefeller University | ||
| data-sort-value="de Lange" | Titia de Lange (born 1955) | "for research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends and their role in genome instability in cancer." | Rockefeller University | ||||
| Fundamental Physics (special) | Fabiola Gianotti (born 1960) | "for their leadership role in the scientific endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider." (awarded with Peter Jenni (ATLAS), Michel Della Negra, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Guido Tonelli, Joe Incandela (CMS) and Lyn Evans (LHC)) | CERN | ||||
| 2015[3] | Life Sciences | Jennifer Doudna (born 1964) | "for harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful and general technology for editing genomes, with wide-ranging implications across biology and medicine." | University of California, Berkeley Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |||
| Emmanuelle Charpentier (born 1968) | Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research Umeå University | ||||||
| 2016[4] | Life Sciences | Helen Hobbs (born 1952) | "for the discovery of human genetic variants that alter the levels and distribution of cholesterol and other lipids, inspiring new approaches to the prevention of cardiovascular and liver disease." | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |||
| 2017[5] | Life Sciences | Huda Zoghbi (born 1954) | "for discoveries of the genetic causes and biochemical mechanisms of spinocerebellar ataxia and Rett syndrome, findings that have provided insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neurological diseases." | Baylor College of Medicine Texas Children's Hospital Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |||
| 2018 | Life Sciences | Joanne Chory (born 1955) | "for discovering how plants optimize their growth, development, and cellular structure to transform sunlight into chemical energy." | Salk Institute for Biological Studies Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |||
| Fundamental Physics (special) | Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943) | "for fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community." | University of Oxford University of Dundee | ||||
| 2019 | Life Sciences | Angelika Amon (1967–2020) | "for determining the consequences of aneuploidy, an abnormal chromosome number resulting from chromosome mis-segregation." | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |||
| 2020[6] | Life Sciences | Virginia Man-Yee Lee (born 1945) | "for discovering TDP43 protein aggregates in frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and revealing that different forms of alpha-synuclein, in different cell types, underlie Parkinson's disease and Multiple System Atrophy." | University of Pennsylvania | |||
| Mathematics (posthumous) | Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) | "for revolutionary discoveries in the dynamics and geometry of moduli spaces of Abelian differentials, including the proof of the 'magic wand theorem'." (awarded jointly with Alex Eskin) | Stanford University | ||||
| 2021[7] | Life Sciences | Catherine Dulac (born 1963) | "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." | Harvard University Howard Hughes Medical Institute | |||
| 2022[8] | Life Sciences | Katalin Karikó (born 1955) | "for engineering modified RNA technology which enabled rapid development of effective COVID-19 vaccines." (awarded jointly with Drew Weissman) | BioNTech University of Pennsylvania | |||
| 2024[9] | Life Sciences | Sabine Hadida (born 1966) | "for developing life-transforming drug combinations that repair the defective chloride channel protein in patients with cystic fibrosis." (awarded jointly with Paul Negulescu and Fredrick Van Goor) | Vertex Pharmaceuticals | |||
| Ellen Sidransky (born 1955) | "for identifying GBA1 and LRRK2 as risk genes for Parkinson's disease, implicating autophagy and lysosomal biology as critical contributors to the pathogenesis of the disease." | National Human Genome Research Institute National Institutes of Health |