Scientists, the real rock stars
Five mathematicians win a brand new prize in their field, earning 3 million dollars in the process. The Breakthrough Prize was founded by internet entrepreneurs to add some sparkle to science. One of the founders is Mark Zuckerberg, the big Facebook guy.
According to the press release, “[The Breakthrough Prize] aims to recognize major advances in the field, honor the world’s best mathematicians, support their future endeavors and communicate the excitement of mathematics to general public.” It is the first time that the prize has been awarded in mathematics, there already was a prize for Life Sciences and Fundamental Physics. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
Winners are:
Simon Donaldson, Stony Brook University and Imperial College London,
Maxim Kontsevich, Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques,
Jacob Lurie, Harvard University,
Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles, and
Richard Taylor, Institute for Advanced Study.
The scientists have all done groundbreaking work in the field, and Zuckerberg says that he and his fellow founders are excited to celebrate their efforts. The prize is meant to generate excitement about science as a career and make scientists like this ’the real rock stars’, but it will still be hard for the general public to understand why they won the prize. For example, Taylor won “for numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the Taniyama-Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and the Sato-Tate conjecture.” This is significantly harder to understand than a Rolling Stones song.
