The Breakthrough Prize was created by some of the most distinguished names in Silicon Valley. It aims to celebrate scientists and generate interest in the pursuance of career in science.
It does not just distinguish researchers who did well in their fields. The annual award, which was created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan; Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other leading technology entrepreneurs, also rewards $3 million for each prize, which is nearly three times the amount of cash received by a Nobel Prize Winner.
For the 2015 Breakthrough Prize, a total of $33 million were rewarded to 12 individual and group winners named at a star-studded gala at NASA's Ames Research Center in California on Sunday.
"The world faces many fundamental challenges today, and there are many amazing scientists, researchers and engineers helping us solve them," Zuckerberg said. "This year's Breakthrough Prize winners have made discoveries that will help cure disease and move the world forward. They deserve to be recognized as heroes."
The 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics were awarded to a team of astrophysicists whose work showed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and not slowing as it was long believed. The team composed of Brian Schmidt, Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess also won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2011 for the same work.
For the life sciences category, Alim Louis Benabid, Jennifer Doudna, C. David Allis, Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun and Emmanuelle Charpentier, were awarded for their works in areas that range from the revolutionary treatment of Parkinson's disease to bacterial immunity.
This year also marks the inauguration of the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics honoring five mathematicians namely Jacob Lurie, Simon Donaldson, Maxim Kontsevich, Terence Tao and Richard Taylor for their major contributions in their field.
The New Horizons in Physics prizes, on the other hand, went to Sean Hartnoll, Philip Schuster, Natalia Toro, Horacio Casini, Tadashi Takayanagi, Marina Huerta and Shinsei Ryu.
Some scientists, however, are critical of the prizes. Dame Athene Donald, a physicist from Cambridge University in the U.K described the Breakthrough Prizes as something of a vanity prize organized by deep-pocketed individuals.
"It seems that the Breakthrough Prize is not yet as credible as the Nobel Prize. The fact that there is so much showbiz involvement may not help that credibility," Donald said. "I also worry that their publicity is essentially that, rather than actually trying to inform and enthuse the public, and reach out to school children."
Presenters at the 2nd Annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony included Cameron Diaz, Jon Hamm, Kate Beckinsale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne.
