2019 Shaw Prize honors scientists for their contribution in astronomy, life sciences, and mathematics
The Shaw Prize Foundation based in Hong Kong announced the winners of the 2019 Shaw Prize on May 21. The prestigious award, widely regarded as the "Nobel of the East," honors scientists who have made significant contributions to the field of astronomy, life sciences and medicine, and mathematical sciences.
Let us take a look at the winners of this year’s Shaw Prize:
Astronomy
Edward Stone, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena was awarded the prize in astronomy for his contribution in the Voyager mission initiated by NASA. The twin Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977, transformed scientists’ knowledge about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The spacecrafts crossed the heliosphere—the area of the space where the sun has significant influence—in 2012 and 2018, becoming the first objects from Earth to do so.
"This is a tremendous honor," Stone told NASA, and added that it is "a tribute to the teams who designed, developed, launched and operated Voyager on an inspiring journey of more than four decades."
Life science and medicine
The Shaw Prize in life science and medicine was awarded to Maria Jasin, a molecular biologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, for her research “showing that localized double strand breaks in DNA stimulate recombination in mammalian cells.” Jasin’s work led to the development of gene editing tools like the CRISPR–Cas9 system. Applauding Jasin’s contribution, Professor Chan Wai-yee, a Shaw Prize council member, noted that her work has huge implications in finding the treatment of hereditary diseases and can help to “look at some markers for cancers, and eventually ways of curing and preventing cancer.”
Mathematical sciences
The mathematical sciences prize was conferred upon Michel Talagrand, a mathematician at the French national research agency CNRS in Paris. Talagrand’s work in probability theory and stochastic processes, as well as ‘spin glasses,’ which are materials in which atomic spins are not aligned but rather scattered in random arrangements, won him the honor. “Talagrand is a true one-off, nearly always working on his own, and obtaining extraordinary and highly unexpected results that have changed the mathematical landscape,” read the Shaw Prize press release.
The Shaw Prize, established by the late Run Run Shaw, a Hong Kong-based philanthropist and popular media personality, was first awarded in the year 2004. The recipients of the award will each receive US$1.2 million as the prize money. The prizes will be presented to the laureates on September 25, 2019, in a ceremony in Hong Kong.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Related reading:
- The 2014 Shaw Prize
- Congratulations to winners of the 2014 Shaw Prize
- Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 Shaw Prize
- Congratulations to the winners of 2016 Shaw Prize
References:
- Voyager spacecraft steward among winners of prestigious Hong Kong prizes
- Shaw Laureates 2019
- Announcement of The Shaw Laureates 2019
- Shaw Prize in Astronomy Awarded to Ed Stone
- Cornell University scientist Maria Jasin famed for trailblazing DNA research towards cancer breakthrough wins a Shaw Prize in Hong Kong
Published on: May 29, 2019
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