AAS Members Among Breakthrough Prize's 2024 Laureates

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its sponsors have announced the 2024 recipients of the Breakthrough Prize, awarding a collective total of $15 million to 11 researchers for important achievements in the life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics. In addition, six New Horizons Prizes, each of $100,000, were distributed between 12 early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields, and three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes were awarded to early-career women mathematicians.

Two members of the AAS are among the 12 recipients of the New Horizons in Physics Prizes:

• Michael Johnson, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
• Oliver Philcox, Columbia University and Simons Foundation

Johnson, along with Alexandru Lupsasca (Vanderbilt University), received one New Horizons prize "for elucidating the sub-structure and universal characteristics of black hole photon rings, and their proposed detection by next-generation interferometric experiments."

Philcox, along with Mikhail Ivanov (MIT) and Marko Simonović (University of Florence), received a separate New Horizons prize "for contributions to our understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe and the development of new tools to extract fundamental physics from galaxy surveys."

The laureates will be celebrated 13 April 2024 at the 10^th annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony, held in Los Angeles. The Breakthrough Prize ceremony places scientists on center stage, and it is attended by luminaries in film, sports, comedy, and music, to lend their spotlight to shine on scientists.

For more information about the Breakthrough Prizes and New Horizons Prizes, see the press release from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, from which this post was adapted.