Professor Adrian Krainer of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has been awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize for his work on a rare neurodegenerative disease.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its sponsors – Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Yuri and Julia Milner and Anne Wojcicki – announced Wednesday the recipients of the 2019 Breakthrough Prize, awarding a total of $22 million to nine researchers for important achievements in the Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics.
The 2019 Breakthrough Prize and New Horizon Prize recipients will be recognized at the seventh annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony, known as the “Oscars of Science,” hosted by acclaimed actor, producer and philanthropist Pierce Brosnan, on Sunday, Nov. 4, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and broadcast live on National Geographic.
The Life Sciences prize was also awarded to C. Frank Bennett, Angelika Amon, Xiaowei Zhuang, and Zhijian “James” Chen.
Considered the world’s most generous science prize, each Breakthrough Prize is for $3 million. Now in its seventh year, the prize recognizes achievements in the Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics, the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations.