For breakthroughs in the sciences!

Winners of the prize for "Breakthrough in Science" have been announced

Alexey Ponyatov, "Science and Life"

Read about the physics laureates and what they discovered, if you want, in the full text of the article.
And here is an abbreviated version, about the awards for breakthroughs in Life Sciences – VM.

On December 12, the winners of the scientific prize for "Breakthrough in Fundamental Physics and in the Life Sciences" were awarded in Silicon Valley.

Seven of the largest scientific prizes for $ 3 million have found their owners. There were also awards in other categories announced earlier.

The founder of the award is the Russian businessman Yuri Milner, who established the prize in fundamental physics in 2012. Milner himself graduated from the Physics Department of Moscow State University, studied in graduate school and worked for some time at the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences. Lebedeva (FIAN). After going into business, he earned a large fortune (according to Forbes estimates – more than $ 1 billion).

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Yuri Milner managed to attract the creator of the Facebook social network Mark Zuckerberg, one of the creators of the Google search engine Sergey Brin and the founder of the Chinese Internet business company Alibaba Jack Ma to finance the awards. Each of them contributed $7 million a year (for reference: the fortune of all four is estimated by Forbes magazine at approximately $52 billion). This allowed the introduction of 6 more awards, which were called "Breakthrough in the field of life sciences". They are aimed at encouraging research related to the treatment of intractable diseases and prolonging human life.

This year they received:

• James Ellison (MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, USA) for the discovery of an immunological method of cancer treatment by blocking a factor that prevents the immune system from effectively finding and attacking cancer cells.
• Mahlon Delong (Emory University, Atlanta, USA) for finding interconnected neural circuits in the brain that are damaged in Parkinson's disease. This is the basis for the treatment of Parkinson's disease by deep brain stimulation.
• Michael Hall (University of Basel) for the discovery of rapamycin suppression of the activity of an important regulatory protein called "rapamycin target" (TOR) and its role in controlling cell growth. Perhaps this will increase life expectancy.
• Robert Langer (Institute of David Koch, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) for discoveries that allow controlled administration of drugs or their removal from the body through the skin without a needle or other aggressive methods, as well as leading to the creation of new biomaterials (blood vessels, muscle tissue, etc.).
• Richard Lifton (Yale University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute) for the discovery of genes and biochemical mechanisms that cause hypertension.
• Alexander Varshavsky (California Institute of Technology) for discoveries in the field of ubiquitination (degradation of proteins), in particular for the discovery of the "N-end rule" (N-end rule). Its essence is that the protein ubiquitin is a "death mark". It marks other proteins that need to be destroyed in the cellular process. Many diseases are associated with the errors of this process, when proteins that are not yet ready to be destroyed are marked, or vice versa, those proteins that should be destroyed are not marked. These discoveries are important for understanding the nature of cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, the immune system, etc. In 2004, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for work on this topic, but the discoverer was bypassed, which caused a protest among the scientific community. A. Varshavsky, a graduate of the Chemical Faculty of Moscow State University, defended his PhD thesis at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1977 he emigrated to the USA.

At the end of the award ceremony, Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner announced the establishment of another $3 million prize for a "Breakthrough in Mathematics." Detailed information about the new award will be announced later.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.12.2013