Special Breakthrough Prize winners at Strathclyde

Now in its fifth year, the prestigious Breakthrough Prize recognise the world’s top scientists, and this year a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded for the Detection of Gravitational Waves.  $1M of the $3M Prize is to be awarded to Ronald W.P.Drever (Caltech—now residing in Edinburgh), Kip S.Thorne (Caltech), and Rainer Weiss (MIT); and the balance of the Prize is to be split between 1012 co-researchers, worldwide. In the University of Strathclyde, Department of Physics, three co-researchers are to share in the Prize: Dr Nicholas Lockerbie (Head of Gravitational Physics); and Dr Kirill Tokmakov, and Mr Sharat Jawahar—who both work with Dr Lockerbie.

The Breakthrough Prize was founded by a group of entrepreneurs and philanthropists: Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google), Anne Wojcicki  (co-founder of 23andme), Mark Zuckerberg (chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook) and his wife, Priscilla Chan, Yuri Milner (founder of Digital Sky Technologies) and his wife,  Julia Milner, and Jack Ma (founder and CEO of the Alibaba Group )and his wife, Cathy Zhang.  Committees of previous laureates choose the winners from candidates nominated in a process that’s online, and open to the public.

4th May 2016