4 scientists awarded Shaw Prize in Hong Kong

HONG KONG -- Four scientists were awarded the Shaw Prize Award here on Tuesday for their prominent work in the prize's three categories.

The Astronomy prize is awarded in equal shares to John Richard Bond, a professor from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, and George Efstathiou, an astrophysics professor from the University of Cambridge, for their pioneering research in cosmology, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.

The Life Science and Medicine prize went to Wolfgang Baumeister, director emeritus and scientific member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, for his pioneering development and use of cryogenic-electron tomography, an imaging technique that enables three-dimensional visualization of biological samples, including proteins, macromolecular complexes, and cellular compartments as they exist in their natural cellular settings.

The Mathematical Sciences prize went to Kenji Fukaya, a professor from the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications and the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center of Tsinghua University, for his pioneering work on symplectic geometry, especially for envisioning the existence of a category, nowadays called the Fukaya category.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) John Lee congratulated the awardees on their outstanding, and continuing, contributions to science and to civilization. He noted that the HKSAR government is committed to significant investments in innovation and technology, and the research and development that drives it.

Lee also paid tribute to the late renowned physicist Chen Ning Yang, a Nobel laureate and a founding member of the Shaw Prize. He said that Yang reshaped modern physics, and remained devoted to the scientific and educational development of China.

Established in 2002, the Hong Kong-based Shaw Prize, an international recognition of remarkable scientific achievements, is managed under the Shaw Prize Foundation and has been awarded annually since 2004. Each prize carries a cash award of $1.2 million.