On Saturday, April 18, the world’s leading scientists and mathematicians joined Hollywood’s top stars in Los Angeles for the 12th annual Breakthrough Prize awards—often referred to as the “Oscars of Science”—to celebrate landmark scientific advancements and the people who make them possible.
(L-R) Sam Altman and Brian Chesky speak onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
Founded in 2012 by tech giants Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Julia & Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, the Breakthrough Prize was created to honor the achievements of the world’s top scientists, awarding approximately $15 million annually in prizes. In 2026, six Breakthrough Prizes of $3 million each were presented in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics—bringing the cumulative amount awarded over its 15-year history to $345 million.
(L-R) Sergey Brin, Frank Merle, 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics winner and Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto attend the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
The annual ceremony was a star-studded affair that put science in the spotlight. Actor and Emmy Award winner James Corden returned for the fifth time to host the evening, with legends like Gigi Hadid, Lily Collins, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hanks (who shared a video tribute to the late astronaut Jim Lovell, whom he portrayed in Apollo 13) presenting awards and offering remarks throughout. Other newer names that have been generating buzz all year were also in attendance, like Olympic freestyle skier and model Eileen Gu, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana.
James Corden speaks onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
Academy Award-winning actors Octavia Spencer and Sean Penn kicked things off by awarding the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences to Stuart H. Orkin and Swee Lay Thein for research that transformed sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia from incurable conditions to treatable ones through gene editing therapy. As she accepted the award, Thein poignantly shared, “As a kid playing on old railway tracks in Malaysia, I never dreamed that I would be here today.”
(L-R) Octavia Spencer and Stuart H. Orkin, 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences winner (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
In Life Sciences, Katherine A. High and husband-and-wife team Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire were recognized for developing the first FDA-approved gene replacement therapy that has restored sight to patients born with Leber congenital amaurosis—a rare inherited retinal disease that typically leads to total blindness in early adulthood. And further prizes were presented to Rosa Rademakers and Bryan Traynor for independently discovering the most common genetic cause of both ALS and frontotemporal dementia—a repeat expansion mutation in the C9orf72 gene.
(L-R) Ron Howard and Brian Grazer speak onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
During the presentation, scientist-physician Yentli Soto Albrecht—who carries the very gene mutation Rademakers and Traynor identified—took the stage in a moving speech and spoke of her father who passed away from ALS: “My dad and I share a genetic fate, but I’m changing my future,” she said. “The scientists honored here tonight discovered our genetic mutation. They mapped the battlefield; now we can wage the war.”
Notably, Olympic gold medalist Eileen Gu and five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen also honored Anthony Hyman and Clifford Brangwynne with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their groundbreaking discovery of a new fundamental mechanism of cellular organization. The prize was actually awarded in 2023, but the duo was unable to appear at the ceremony due to the COVID-19 pandemic and accepted it this year.
(L-R) Eileen Gu and Magnus Carlsen speak onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
Prizes in Fundamental Physics were awarded to the Muon g–2 Collaborations at CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab, recognizing decades of work by scientists around the world who pushed experimental precision to extraordinary levels in measuring the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon—a key test for undiscovered particles and forces. During the presentation, a ballerina suddenly appeared on stage, spinning and circling, offering a creative manifestation of muon’s spinning magnetic moment.
Breakthrough Prize co-founder Yuri Milner and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced the Vera Rubin New Frontiers Prize, a brand-new physics prize that recognizes women physicists who have recently completed their doctorates and are already making important scientific contributions. Named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered core evidence for dark matter, this year’s inaugural prize was awarded to Carolina Figuerido, who has already revealed hidden relations among quantum field theories.
(L-R) Jensen Huang and Yuri Milner speak onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
As the final award in Fundamental Physics, award-winning actresses Michelle Williams and Lily Collins shared the story of Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics winner David J. Gross, underscoring his intellectual family life, discovery of Einstein’s book on physics, and subsequent six decades of significant contributions. While receiving his prize, Gross spoke about how, through the journey of theoretical physics, “Scientific discovery, once revealed, belongs to humanity forever—and challenges us to use it wisely.”
(L-R) Michelle Williams, David J. Gross, 2026 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics winner and Lily Collins at the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
The sole Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics went to Frank Merle for his transformative work on nonlinear evolution equations—the mathematical descriptions of how waves, fluids, and other dynamic systems change over time. Merle’s insights overturned fundamental assumptions in the field, including the surprising discovery that equations long thought to be stable can, in fact, blow up in finite time.
Lionel Richie performs onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
Throughout the night, the ceremony also featured impressive music performances by Grammy winner Lionel Richie, who performed his global hit “We Are the World” alongside a choir of children in attendance, and soprano Renée Fleming, who sang “Hallelujah” accompanied by composer and pianist Billy Childs as a tribute to the great scientists who passed over the last year. Pop icons David Guetta and Ava Max then closed the show with a rendition of “Forever Young” as all the Breakthrough Prize laureates took the stage for one final standing ovation, drawing the scintillating evening to an exuberant close.
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