It is not often that a scientist walks the red carpet at a Silicon Valley party and has Morgan Freeman award them millions of dollars while Alicia Keys performs on stage and other A-listers rub shoulders with NASA astronauts.
But the guest list for the Breakthrough prize ceremony is intended to make it an occasion. At the fifth such event in California last night, a handful of the world’s top researchers left their labs behind for the limelight. Honoured for their work on black holes and string theory, DNA repair and rare diseases, and unfathomable modifications to Schrödinger’s equation, they went home to newly recharged bank accounts.
Founded by Yuri Milner, the billionaire tech investor, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sergey Brin, the Breakthrough prizes aim to right a perceived wrong: that scientists and engineers are not appreciated by society. With lucrative prizes and a lavish party dubbed “the Oscars of science”, Milner and his companions want to elevate scientists to rock star status.