Shaw Prize

Science prizes established by Run Run Shaw From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Shaw Prize is a set of three annual awards presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in the fields of astronomy, medicine and life sciences, and mathematical sciences. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong,[1] by Hong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist Run Run Shaw (邵逸夫),[2] the awards honour "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in academic and scientific research or applications, or who in other domains have achieved excellence."[3] The prize has been described as the "Nobel of the East".[4][5][6][7]

Awarded forOutstanding contributions in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences
RewardUSD$1.2 million
First award2004
Websitewww.shawprize.org
Quick facts Awarded for, Reward ...
Shaw Prize
A gold circular medal with a depiction of an elderly man with glasses wearing a jacket buttoned to the neck; the English words "The Shaw Prize" and Chinese characters "邵逸夫獎" engraved on it
The obverse of the Shaw Prize medal
Awarded forOutstanding contributions in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences
RewardUSD$1.2 million
First award2004
Websitewww.shawprize.org
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Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess and Brian P. Schmidt (from left to right) jointly won the 2006 astronomy prize

Award

The prize consists of three awards in the fields of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences; it is not awarded posthumously. Nominations are submitted by invited individuals beginning each year in September. Winners are announced in the summer and receive the award at a ceremony in early autumn. Each award consists of a gold medal, a certificate and USD$1.2 million (US$1 million before 2015). The front of the medal bears a portrait of Shaw and the name of the prize in English and Traditional Chinese characters; the back bears the year, category, laureate's name and a quotation from the Chinese philosopher Xunzi "制天命而用之" (translated to English as "Grasp the law of nature and make use of it").[8]

As of 2022, there have been 99 Shaw Laureates.[9] 16 Nobel laureates - Jules A. Hoffmann, Bruce Beutler, Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, Shinya Yamanaka, Robert Lefkowitz, Brian Schmidt, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael W. Young, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor, Reinhard Genzel, and David Julius - are Shaw Laureates. The inaugural laureate of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy was Jim Peebles, honored for his contributions to cosmology. Two inaugural prizes were awarded for the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine: Stanley Norman Cohen, Herbert Boyer and Yuet Wai Kan jointly won one of them for their research in DNA while physiologist Richard Doll won the other for his contribution to cancer epidemiology. Shiing-Shen Chern was awarded the inaugural Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences for his work on differential geometry.

Shaw Laureates

Astronomy

More information Year, Portrait ...
Year Portrait Laureate[a] Country[b] Rationale[c]
2004 P. James E. Peebles  United States For his groundbreaking contribution to cosmology. He laid the foundations for almost all modern investigations in cosmology, both theoretical and observational, transforming a highly speculative field into a precision science.[10][11]
2005 Geoffrey Marcy  United States For finding and characterizing the orbits and masses of the first planets around other stars, thereby revolutionizing our understanding of the processes that form planets and planetary systems.[12][13]
Michel Mayor  Switzerland
2006 Saul Perlmutter  United States For discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, implying in the simplest interpretation that the energy density of space is non-vanishing even in the absence of any matter and radiation.[14][15]
Adam Riess  United States
Brian Schmidt  Australia
2007 Peter Goldreich  United States In recognition of his lifetime achievements in theoretical astrophysics and planetary sciences.[16][17]
2008 Reinhard Genzel  Germany In recognition of his outstanding contributions in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre.[18][19]
2009 Frank H. Shu (徐遐生)  United States In recognition of his outstanding life-time contributions in theoretical astronomy.[20][21]
2010 Charles L. Bennett  United States For their leadership of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment, which has enabled precise determinations of the fundamental cosmological parameters, including the geometry, age and composition of the universe.[22][23]
Lyman A. Page Jr.  United States
David N. Spergel  United States
2011 Enrico Costa  Italy For their leadership of space missions that enabled the demonstration of the cosmological origin of gamma ray bursts, the brightest sources known in the universe.[24][25]
Gerald J. Fishman  United States
2012 David Jewitt  United States For their discovery and characterization of trans-Neptunian bodies, an archeological treasure dating back to the formation of the Solar System and the long-sought source of short period comets.[26][27]
Jane Luu  United States
2013 Steven A. Balbus  United Kingdom For their discovery and study of the magnetorotational instability, and for demonstrating that this instability leads to turbulence and is a viable mechanism for angular momentum transport in astrophysical accretion disks.[28][29]
John F. Hawley  United States
2014 Daniel Eisenstein  United States For their contributions to the measurements of features in the large-scale structure of galaxies used to constrain the cosmological model including baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions.[30][31]
Shaun Cole  United Kingdom
John A. Peacock  United Kingdom
2015 William J. Borucki  United States For his conceiving and leading the Kepler Mission, which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors.[32][33]
2016 Ronald W. P. Drever  United Kingdom For conceiving and designing the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), whose recent direct detection of gravitational waves opens a new window in astronomy, with the first remarkable discovery being the merger of a pair of stellar mass black holes.[34][35]
Kip S. Thorne  United States
Rainer Weiss  United States
2017 Simon D. M. White  Germany For his contributions to understanding structure formation in the Universe. With powerful numerical simulations he has shown how small density fluctuations in the early Universe develop into galaxies and other nonlinear structures, strongly supporting a cosmology with a flat geometry, and dominated by dark matter and a cosmological constant.[36][37]
2018 Jean-Loup Puget  France For his contributions to astronomy in the infrared to submillimetre spectral range. He detected the cosmic far-infrared background from past star-forming galaxies, and proposed aromatic hydrocarbon molecules as a constituent of interstellar matter. With the Planck space mission, he has dramatically advanced our knowledge of cosmology in the presence of interstellar matter foregrounds.[38][39]
2019 Edward C. Stone  United States For his leadership in the Voyager project, which has, over the past four decades, transformed our understanding of the four giant planets and the outer Solar System, and has now begun to explore interstellar space.[40][41]
2020 Roger D. Blandford  United States For his foundational contributions to theoretical astrophysics, especially concerning the fundamental understanding of active galactic nuclei, the formation and collimation of relativistic jets, the energy extraction mechanism from black holes, and the acceleration of particles in shocks and their relevant radiation mechanisms.[42][43]
2021 Victoria M. Kaspi  Canada For their contributions to our understanding of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars that are linked to a wide range of spectacular, transient astrophysical phenomena. Through the development of new and precise observational techniques, they confirmed the existence of neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields and characterized their physical properties. Their work has established magnetars as a new and important class of astrophysical objects.[44][45]
Chryssa Kouveliotou  United States
2022 Lennart Lindegren  Sweden For their lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions.[46][47]
Michael Perryman  Ireland
2023 Matthew Bailes  Australia For the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs).[48]
Duncan Lorimer  United States
Maura McLaughlin  United States
2024 Shrinivas R. Kulkarni  United States For his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects
2025 John Richard Bond  Canada For their pioneering research in cosmology, in particular for their studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Their predictions have been verified by an armada of ground-, balloon- and space-based instruments, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.[49]
George Efstathiou  United Kingdom
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Life science and medicine

More information Year, Portrait ...
Year Portrait Laureate[a] Country[b] Rationale[c]
2004[d] Stanley N. Cohen  United States For their discoveries on DNA cloning and genetic engineering.[11][50]
Herbert W. Boyer  United States
Yuet-Wai Kan  United States For his discoveries on DNA polymorphism and its influence on human genetics.[11][50]
2004[d] Richard Doll  United Kingdom For his contribution to modern cancer epidemiology.[11][50]
2005 Michael Berridge  United Kingdom For his discoveries on calcium signalling in the regulation of cellular activity.[51][52]
2006 Xiaodong Wang  United States For his discovery of the biochemical basis of programmed cell death, a vital process that balances cell birth and defends against cancer.[53][54]
2007 Robert Lefkowitz  United States For his relentless elucidation of the major receptor system that mediates the response of cells and organs to drugs and hormones.[55][56]
2008[e] Keith H. S. Campbell  United Kingdom For their recent pivotal innovations in reversing the process of cell differentiation in mammals, a phenomenon which advances our knowledge of developmental biology and holds great promise for the treatment of human diseases and improvements in agriculture practices.[57][58]
Ian Wilmut  United Kingdom
Shinya Yamanaka  Japan
2009 Douglas L. Coleman  United States For their work leading to the discovery of leptin, a hormone that regulates food intake and body weight.[59][60]
Jeffrey M. Friedman  United States
2010 David Julius  United States For his seminal discoveries of molecular mechanisms by which the skin senses painful stimuli and temperature and produces pain hypersensitivity.[61][62]
2011 Jules A. Hoffmann  France For their discovery of the molecular mechanism of innate immunity, the first line of defense against pathogens.[63][64]
Ruslan M. Medzhitov  United States
Bruce A. Beutler  United States
2012 Franz-Ulrich Hartl  Germany For their contributions to the understanding of the molecular mechanism of protein folding. Proper protein folding is essential for many cellular functions.[65][66]
Arthur L. Horwich  United States
2013 Jeffrey C. Hall  United States For their discovery of molecular mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms.[67][68]
Michael Rosbash  United States
Michael W. Young  United States
2014 Kazutoshi Mori  Japan For their discovery of the Unfolded Protein Response of the endoplasmic reticulum, a cell signalling pathway that controls organelle homeostasis and quality of protein export in eukaryotic cells.[69][70]
Peter Walter  United States
2015 Bonnie L. Bassler  United States For elucidating the molecular mechanism of quorum sensing, a process whereby bacteria communicate with each other and which offers innovative ways to interfere with bacterial pathogens or to modulate the microbiome for health applications.[71][72]
E. Peter Greenberg  United States
2016 Adrian P. Bird  United Kingdom For their discovery of the genes and the encoded proteins that recognize one chemical modification of the DNA of chromosomes that influences gene control as the basis of the developmental disorder Rett syndrome.[73][74]
Huda Y. Zoghbi  United States
2017 Ian R. Gibbons  United States For their discovery of microtubule-associated motor proteins: engines that power cellular and intracellular movements essential to the growth, division, and survival of human cells.[75][76]
Ronald D. Vale  United States
2018 Mary-Claire King  United States For her mapping the first breast cancer gene. Using mathematical modeling, King predicted and then demonstrated that breast cancer can be caused by a single gene. She mapped the gene which facilitated its cloning and has saved thousands of lives.[77][78]
2019 Maria Jasin  United States For her work showing that localized double strand breaks in DNA stimulate recombination in mammalian cells. This seminal work was essential for and led directly to the tools enabling editing at specific sites in mammalian genomes.[79][80]
2020 Gero Miesenböck  Austria For the development of optogenetics, a technology that has revolutionized neuroscience.[81][82]
Peter Hegemann  Germany
Georg Nagel  Germany
2021 Scott D. Emr  United States For the landmark discovery of the ESCRT (Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport) pathway, which is essential in diverse processes involving membrane biology, including cell division, cell-surface receptor regulation, viral dissemination, and nerve axon pruning. These processes are central to life, health and disease.[83][84]
2022 Paul A. Negulescu  United States For landmark discoveries of the molecular, biochemical, and functional defects underlying cystic fibrosis and the identification and development of medicines that reverse those defects and can treat most people affected by this disorder. Together, these discoveries and medicines are alleviating human suffering and saving lives.[85][86]
Michael J. Welsh  United States
2023 Patrick Cramer  Germany For pioneering structural biology that enabled visualisation, at the level of individual atoms, of the protein machines responsible for gene transcription, one of life's fundamental processes. They revealed the mechanism underlying each step in gene transcription, how proper gene transcription promotes health, and how dysregulation causes disease.[48]
Eva Nogales  Spain &  United States
2024 Stuart H. Orkin  United States For their discovery of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch, making possible a revolutionary and highly effective genome-editing therapy for sickle cell anemia and β thalassemia, devastating blood diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.
Swee Lay Thein  United States
2025 Wolfgang Baumeister  Germany For his pioneering development and use of cryogenic-electron tomography (cryo-ET), an imaging technique that enables three-dimensional visualisation of biological samples, including proteins, macromolecular complexes, and cellular compartments as they exist in their natural cellular settings.[49]
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Mathematical sciences

More information Year, Portrait ...
Year Portrait Laureate[a] Country[b] Rationale[c]
2004 Shiing-Shen Chern (陳省身)  China For his initiation of the field of global differential geometry and his continued leadership of the field, resulting in beautiful developments that are at the centre of contemporary mathematics, with deep connections to topology, algebra and analysis, in short, to all major branches of mathematics of the last sixty years.[87][88]
2005 Andrew John Wiles  United Kingdom For his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.[89][90]
2006 David Mumford  United States For David Mumford's contributions to mathematics, and to the new interdisciplinary fields of pattern theory and vision research; and for Wentsun Wu's contributions to the new interdisciplinary field of mathematics mechanization.[91][92]
Wentsun Wu (吳文俊)  China
2007 Robert Langlands  Canada For initiating and developing a grand unifying vision of mathematics that connects prime numbers with symmetry.[93][94]
Richard Taylor  United Kingdom
2008 Vladimir Arnold  Russia For their widespread and influential contributions to Mathematical Physics.[95][96]
Ludwig Faddeev  Russia
2009 Simon K. Donaldson  United Kingdom For their many brilliant contributions to geometry in 3 and 4 dimensions.[97][98]
Clifford H. Taubes  United States
2010 Jean Bourgain  Belgium For his profound work in mathematical analysis and its application to partial differential equations, mathematical physics, combinatorics, number theory, ergodic theory and theoretical computer science.[99][100]
2011 Demetrios Christodoulou  Switzerland For their highly innovative works on nonlinear partial differential equations in Lorentzian and Riemannian geometry and their applications to general relativity and topology.[101][102]
Richard S. Hamilton  United States
2012 Maxim Kontsevich  France For his pioneering works in algebra, geometry and mathematical physics and in particular deformation quantization, motivic integration and mirror symmetry.[103][104]
2013 David L. Donoho  United States For his profound contributions to modern mathematical statistics and in particular the development of optimal algorithms for statistical estimation in the presence of noise and of efficient techniques for sparse representation and recovery in large data-sets.[105][106]
2014 George Lusztig  United States For his fundamental contributions to algebra, algebraic geometry, and representation theory, and for weaving these subjects together to solve old problems and reveal beautiful new connections.[107][108]
2015 Gerd Faltings  Germany For their introduction and development of fundamental tools in number theory, allowing them as well as others to resolve some longstanding classical problems.[109][110]
Henryk Iwaniec  United States
2016 Nigel J. Hitchin  United Kingdom For his far-reaching contributions to geometry, representation theory and theoretical physics. The fundamental and elegant concepts and techniques that he has introduced have had wide impact and are of lasting importance.[111][112]
2017 János Kollár  Hungary For their remarkable results in many central areas of algebraic geometry, which have transformed the field and led to the solution of long-standing problems that had appeared out of reach.[113][114]
Claire Voisin  France
2018 Luis A. Caffarelli  Argentina For his groundbreaking work on partial differential equations, including creating a theory of regularity for nonlinear equations such as the Monge-Ampère equation, and free-boundary problems such as the obstacle problem, work that has influenced a whole generation of researchers in the field.[115][116]
2019 Michel Talagrand  France For his work on concentration inequalities, on suprema of stochastic processes and on rigorous results for spin glasses.[117][118]
2020 Alexander Beilinson  United States For their huge influence on and profound contributions to representation theory, as well as many other areas of mathematics.[119][120]
David Kazhdan  Israel
2021 Jean-Michel Bismut  France For their remarkable insights that have transformed, and continue to transform, modern geometry.[121][122]
Jeff Cheeger  United States
2022 Noga Alon  Israel For their remarkable contributions to discrete mathematics and model theory with interaction notably with algebraic geometry, topology and computer sciences.[123][124]
Ehud Hrushovski  Israel
2023 Vladimir Drinfeld  United States For their contributions related to mathematical physics, to arithmetic geometry, to differential geometry and to Kähler geometry.[48]
Shing-Tung Yau  United States
2024 Peter Sarnak  United States For his development of the arithmetic theory of thin groups and the affine sieve, by bringing together number theory, analysis, combinatorics, dynamics, geometry and spectral theory.
2025 Kenji Fukaya  Japan For his pioneering work on symplectic geometry, especially for envisioning the existence of a category — nowadays called the Fukaya category — consisting of Lagrangians on a symplectic manifold, for leading the monumental task of constructing it, and for his subsequent ground-breaking and impactful contributions to symplectic topology, mirror symmetry, and gauge theory.[49]
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