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Breakthrough Prizes

The Breakthrough Prizes honor important, primarily recent, achievements in the categories of fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics. The prizes are founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Pony Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Committees of previous laureates choose the winners from candidates nominated in a process that’s online and open to the public.Laureates receive $3 million each in prize money. They attend a televised award ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and inspire the next generation of scientists. As part of the ceremony schedule, they also engage in a program of lectures and discussions.

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation offers New Horizons Prizes in these same categories, providing an award of $100,000 to early-career researchers who have already produced important work.

New Horizons in Mathematics Prize

Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown (2022)

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

For contributions to the proof of Zimmer’s conjecture (prize shared with Sebastian Hurtado)

Aaron Brown works primarily in smooth hyperbolic dynamics, nonuniform hyperbolicity, and smooth ergodic theory. His recent work focuses on smooth group actions, applying tools from smooth dynamics and smooth ergodic theory to study rigidity phenomenon for actions of large groups. In particular, he is interested in measure rigidity questions and problems related to the rigidity of lattice actions and the Zimmer program. Aaron Brown is Professor of Mathematics.

Aaron Naber

Aaron Naber (2017)

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

For work in geometric analysis and Riemannian geometry, introducing powerful new techniques to solve outstanding problems, particularly for manifolds with Ricci curvature bounds.

Aaron Naber's current research interests focus on the study of geometrically motivated equations and their applications. This includes work in the areas of Ricci curvature, nonlinear harmonic maps, yang-mills, minimal varifolds, sectional curvature, ricci solitons, mean curvature flow, Ricci flow, and general elliptic equations. He is the Kenneth F. Burgess Professor of Mathematics.