AsianScientist (Jun. 8, 2011) – The Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong announced on June 7 that seven scientists would receive the 2011 Shaw Prize for their pioneering work on gamma ray bursts, innate immunity, and modern geometry and physics.
Established by Hong Kong media mogul Run Run Shaw in 2002, the annual Shaw Prize (邵逸夫奖) acknowledges individuals “who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or application and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.”
The Shaw Prize consists of three US$1 million awards in Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences.
The astronomy prize was shared between Enrico Costa of the Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics in Rome, Italy and Gerald J. Fishman of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for their roles in elucidating the cosmological origins of gamma ray bursts. The scientists carried out some of the first experiments to establish the extragalactic sources of gamma ray bursts and the specific origins of these bursts in supernova explosions and neutron star collisions.
Jules A Hoffman of the University of Strasbourg, France, Ruslan M. Medzhitov of Yale University, USA, and Bruce A. Beutler of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, USA were awarded the prize in life science and medicine for their pioneering work in establishing the mechanisms of innate immunity, the non-specific first line of defense against infection. The researchers were specifically recognized for their roles in discovering the key molecules that regulate the innate immune response, Toll in fruit flies and Toll-like receptors in humans, and the mechanisms by which these molecules active innate immunity.
The prize in mathematical sciences was given to Demetrios Christodoulou of ETH, Zurich in Switzerland and Richard S. Hamilton of Columbia University in New York, USA for their contributions to understanding nonlinear partial differential equations in Lorentzian and Riemannian geometry and their applications to general relativity and topology.
Past winners of the Shaw Prize have included P. James E. Peebles for his contributions to cosmology, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, Japan for his work on cell reprogramming, and Andrew John Wiles of Princeton University, USA for his proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
The prizes will be presented to the 2011 winners at a ceremony on September 28, 2011.
The full list of winners can be found at the: Announcement of The Shaw Laureates 2011.
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Source: The Shaw Prize.
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