LIGO Is Presented with the Special Breakthrough Prize Award
Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and the 1012 LIGO collaborators are the recipients.
At a ceremony at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, LIGO representatives were presented with the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. In May, LIGO was announced as the recipient of this year's Special Breakthrough Prize "... for detection of gravitational waves 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence." The award, which comes with a $3 million cash prize, will be shared between two groups of recipients: the three founders of LIGO Laboratory will share $1 million; and 1012 contributors will each equally share $2 million. The ceremony, which was hosted by Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman and included a performance by 15-time Grammy® Award winner Alicia Keys, co-founders Sergey Brin (Google) and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), Yuri Milner (DST Global) and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Priscilla Chan (Chan Zuckerberg Initiatives), as well as Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. The ceremony was broadcast live on National Geographic on Sunday, Dec. 4. An edited, 1-hour version will be broadcast on FOX on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 7:00-8:00 PM ET/PT and globally on National Geographic in 171 countries and 45 languages.
Congratulations to LIGO on this well-deserved honor!
Read more:
The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Announcement
The Breakthrough Prize Ceremony
Hollywood Lends Some of Its Shine to Science at the 2017 Breakthrough Prizes
Image: The Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
At a ceremony at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, LIGO representatives were presented with the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. In May, LIGO was announced as the recipient of this year's Special Breakthrough Prize "... for detection of gravitational waves 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence." The award, which comes with a $3 million cash prize, will be shared between two groups of recipients: the three founders of LIGO Laboratory will share $1 million; and 1012 contributors will each equally share $2 million. The ceremony, which was hosted by Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman and included a performance by 15-time Grammy® Award winner Alicia Keys, co-founders Sergey Brin (Google) and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), Yuri Milner (DST Global) and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Priscilla Chan (Chan Zuckerberg Initiatives), as well as Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. The ceremony was broadcast live on National Geographic on Sunday, Dec. 4. An edited, 1-hour version will be broadcast on FOX on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 7:00-8:00 PM ET/PT and globally on National Geographic in 171 countries and 45 languages.
Congratulations to LIGO on this well-deserved honor!
Read more:
The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Announcement
The Breakthrough Prize Ceremony
Hollywood Lends Some of Its Shine to Science at the 2017 Breakthrough Prizes
Image: The Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
