Breakthrough Prize Honors Early Career Astronomers

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its sponsors have announced the 2022 recipients of the Breakthrough Prize, awarding a collective total of $15 million to nine 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 13 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.

The recipients of one of the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prizes are four members of the AAS:

• Alessandra Corsi, Texas Tech University
• Gregg Hallinan, California Institute of Technology
• Mansi Manoj Kasliwal, California Institute of Technology
• Raffaella Margutti, University of California, Berkeley

The prize was awarded for their "leadership in laying foundations for electromagnetic observations of sources of gravitational waves, and leadership in extracting rich information from the first observed collision of two neutron stars."

The Breakthrough Prize and New Horizons Prize recipients are traditionally celebrated during a live, televised awards ceremony that honors the laureates. Due to the pandemic, this year’s program is postponed until 2022.

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.