Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is awarded by the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to awarding physicists involved in fundamental research. The foundation was founded in July 2012 by Russian physicist and internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner.

As of September 2018, this prize is the most lucrative academic prize in the world and is more than twice the amount given to the Nobel Prize awardees. This prize is also dubbed by the media as the "XXI Century Nobel".

Nominations and awards money

As of September 2018, anyone can nominate a candidate through the Fundamental Physics Prize website. As of September 2018, each award is worth $3 million. The monetary value exceeds that of the prestigious Nobel Prize, which in 2012 stood at slightly more than $1.2 million.

Physics Frontiers Prize laureates (those on the shortlist for the Fundamental Physics Prize) who do not go on to be awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize each receive (as of 2013) $300,000 and are automatically re-nominated for the Fundamental Physics Prize each year for the next 5 years.

Special Breakthrough Prize

Unlike the annual Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Special Prize is not limited to recent discoveries. As of 2020 the Special Prize, which "can be awarded at any time in recognition of an extraordinary scientific achievement", has been awarded on 5 occasions (twice in 2013, and once in 2016, 2018 and 2019). The monetary value of the award is also $3 million.

Laureates by year (including Special Prize winners)

2022:

• Hidetoshi Katori 香取秀俊 (Japan) (b. 1964) and Jun Ye 叶军 (China-USA) (b. 1967), "For outstanding contributions to the invention and development of the optical lattice clock, which enables precision tests of the fundamental laws of nature."

2021 Special:

• Steven Weinberg Nobel Prize in physics 1979 (USA) (1933 – 2021), "For his continuous leadership in fundamental physics, with broad impact across particle physics, gravity and cosmology, and for communicating science to a wider audience".

2021:

• Eric Adelberger (USA) (), Jens H. Gundlach (USA) () and Blayne Heckel (USA) (), "For precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy, and establish limits on couplings to dark matter". 2020:
• The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, "For the first image of a supermassive black hole, taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes".

2019 Special:

• Sergio Ferrara (Italy) (b. 1945), Daniel Zissel Freedman (USA) (b. 1945) and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (Netherlands-USA) (b. 1938), "For the invention of supergravity, in which quantum variables are part of the description of the geometry of spacetime". 2019:
• Charles Kane (USA) (b. 1963) and Eugene Mele (USA) (b. ?), "For new ideas about topology and symmetry in physics, leading to the prediction of a new class of materials that conduct electricity only on their surface".

2018:

• Charles L. Bennett (USA) (b. 1956), Gary Hinshaw (USA) (b. ?), Norman C. Jarosik (USA) (b. ?), Lyman Alexander Page Jr. (USA) (b. 1957), David Nathaniel Spergel (USA) (b. 1961) and the WMAP Science Team, "For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies".

2017:

• Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. (USA) (1954–2018), Andrew Eben Strominger (USA) (b. 1955) and Cumrun Vafa (Iran-USA) (b. 1960), "For transformative advances in quantum field theory, string theory, and quantum gravity".

2016:

• Yifang Wang 王贻芳 (China) (b. 1963); Kam-Biu Luk 陸錦標 (China) (b. 1953) and the Daya Bay Team; Atsuto Suzuki (Japan) (b. 1946) and the KamLAND Team; Kōichirō Nishikawa (Japan) (1948-2018) and the K2K/T2K Team; Arthur Bruce McDonald, CC OOnt ONS FRS FRSC Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 (Canada) (b. 1943) and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Team; Takaaki Kajita 梶田 隆章 Nobel Prize in Physics 2015(Japan) (b. 1959); and Yōichirō Suzuki 鈴木 洋一郎 (Japan) (b. 1952) and the Super-Kamiokande Team, "For the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics".

2015:

• Saul Perlmutter Nobel Prize in Physics, 2011 (USA) (b. 1959) and members of the Supernova Cosmology Project; Brian Paul Schmidt AC, FRS, FAA, Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 (Australia) (b. 1967), Adam Guy Riess (USA) (b. 1969) and members of the High-Z Supernova Team, "For the most unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing as had been long assumed".

2014:

• Michael Boris Green FRS HonFInstP] (UK) (b. 1946), John Henry Schwarz (USA) (b. 1941), "For opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces".

2013 Special:

• Stephen Hawking (UK) (), "For his discovery of Hawking radiation from black holes, and his deep contributions to quantum gravity and quantum aspects of the early universe".
• Peter Jenni (CERN, ATLAS experiment) (b.1948), Fabiola Gianotti (CERN, ATLAS experiment) (b.1960), Michel Della Negra (CERN, CMS experiment) (b. 1942), Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee, FRS (CERN, CMS experiment) (b. 1952), Guido Tonelli (CERN, CMS experiment) (b. 1950), Joe Incandela (CERN, CMS experiment) and Lyn Evans (CERN, LHC) (b. 1945), "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".

2013:

• Alexander Markovich Polyakov (Russia-USA) (b.1945), For his many discoveries in field theory and string theory including the conformal bootstrap, magnetic monopoles, instantons, confinement/de-confinement, the quantization of strings in non-critical dimensions, gauge/string duality and many others. His ideas have dominated the scene in these fields during the past decades.

2012:

• Nima Arkani-Hamed (USA-Canada) (b. 1972), "For original approaches to outstanding problems in particle physics.
• Alan Guth (USA) (b. 1947), "For invention of inflationary cosmology, and for contributions to the theory for the generation of cosmological density fluctuations arising from quantum fluctuations".
• Alexei Yurievich Kitaev (Russia-USA) (b. 1963), "For robust quantum memories and fault-tolerant quantum computation using topological quantum phases with anyons and unpaired Majorana modes; topological quantum computing".
• Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich (Russia-France) (b. 1964), "For numerous contributions including development of homological mirror symmetry, and the study of wall-crossing phenomena".
• Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde (Russia-USA) (b. 1948), "For development of inflationary cosmology, including the theory of new inflation, eternal chaotic inflation and the theory of inflationary multiverse, and for contributing to the development of vacuum stabilization mechanisms in string theory".
• Juan Maldacena (Argentina-USA) (b. 1968), "For contributions to gauge/gravity duality, relating gravitational physics in a spacetime and quantum field theory on the boundary of the spacetime".
• Nathan "Nati" Seiberg (Israel-USA) (b. 1956), "For contributions to our understanding of quantum field theory and string theory".
• Ashoke Sen, FRS (India) (b. 1956), "For opening the path to the realization that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory".
• Edward Witten (USA) (b. 1951), "For applications of topology to physics, non-perturbative duality symmetries, models of particle physics derived from string theory, dark matter detection, and the twistor-string approach to particle scattering amplitudes, as well as numerous applications of quantum field theory to mathematics".