The Shaw Prize is a set of three annual awards presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in the fields of astronomy, medicine and life sciences, and mathematical sciences. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, by Hong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist Run Run Shaw (邵逸夫), the awards honour "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in academic and scientific research or applications, or who in other domains have achieved excellence." The prize has been described as the "Nobel of the East".
Award The prize consists of three awards in the fields of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences; it is not awarded posthumously. Nominations are submitted by invited individuals beginning each year in September. Winners are announced in the summer and receive the award at a ceremony in early autumn. Each award consists of a gold medal, a certificate and USD$1.2 million (US$1 million before 2015). The front of the medal bears a portrait of Shaw and the name of the prize in English and Traditional Chinese characters; the back bears the year, category, laureate's name and a quotation from the Chinese philosopher Xunzi "制天命而用之" (translated to English as "Grasp the law of nature and make use of it").
As of 2022, there have been 99 Shaw Laureates. 16 Nobel laureates - Jules A. Hoffmann, Bruce Beutler, Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, Shinya Yamanaka, Robert Lefkowitz, Brian Schmidt, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael W. Young, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor, Reinhard Genzel, and David Julius - are Shaw Laureates. The inaugural laureate of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy was Jim Peebles, honored for his contributions to cosmology. Two inaugural prizes were awarded for the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine: Stanley Norman Cohen, Herbert Boyer and Yuet Wai Kan jointly won one of them for their research in DNA while physiologist Richard Doll won the other for his contribution to cancer epidemiology. Shiing-Shen Chern was awarded the inaugural Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences for his work on differential geometry.
Shaw Laureates Astronomy Year Portrait Laureate Country Rationale 2004 P. James E. Peebles For his groundbreaking contribution to cosmology. He laid the foundations for almost all modern investigations in cosmology, both theoretical and observational, transforming a highly speculative field into a precision science. 2005 Geoffrey Marcy For finding and characterizing the orbits and masses of the first planets around other stars, thereby revolutionizing our understanding of the processes that form planets and planetary systems. Michel Mayor 2006 Saul Perlmutter For discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, implying in the simplest interpretation that the energy density of space is non-vanishing even in the absence of any matter and radiation. Adam Riess Brian Schmidt 2007 Peter Goldreich In recognition of his lifetime achievements in theoretical astrophysics and planetary sciences. 2008 Reinhard Genzel In recognition of his outstanding contributions in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre. 2009 Frank H. Shu (徐遐生) In recognition of his outstanding life-time contributions in theoretical astronomy. 2010 Charles L. Bennett For their leadership of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment, which has enabled precise determinations of the fundamental cosmological parameters, including the geometry, age and composition of the universe. Lyman A. Page Jr. David N. Spergel 2011Enrico Costa For their leadership of space missions that enabled the demonstration of the cosmological origin of gamma ray bursts, the brightest sources known in the universe. Gerald J. Fishman 2012 David Jewitt For their discovery and characterization of trans-Neptunian bodies, an archeological treasure dating back to the formation of the Solar System and the long-sought source of short period comets. Jane Luu 2013 Steven A. Balbus For their discovery and study of the magnetorotational instability, and for demonstrating that this instability leads to turbulence and is a viable mechanism for angular momentum transport in astrophysical accretion disks. John F. Hawley 2014Daniel Eisenstein For their contributions to the measurements of features in the large-scale structure of galaxies used to constrain the cosmological model including baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions.Shaun Cole John A. Peacock 2015 William J. Borucki For his conceiving and leading the Kepler Mission, which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors. 2016 Ronald W. P. Drever For conceiving and designing the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), whose recent direct detection of gravitational waves opens a new window in astronomy, with the first remarkable discovery being the merger of a pair of stellar mass black holes. Kip S. Thorne Rainer Weiss 2017 Simon D. M. White For his contributions to understanding structure formation in the Universe. With powerful numerical simulations he has shown how small density fluctuations in the early Universe develop into galaxies and other nonlinear structures, strongly supporting a cosmology with a flat geometry, and dominated by dark matter and a cosmological constant. 2018Jean-Loup Puget For his contributions to astronomy in the infrared to submillimetre spectral range. He detected the cosmic far-infrared background from past star-forming galaxies, and proposed aromatic hydrocarbon molecules as a constituent of interstellar matter. With the Planck space mission, he has dramatically advanced our knowledge of cosmology in the presence of interstellar matter foregrounds. 2019 Edward C. Stone For his leadership in the Voyager project, which has, over the past four decades, transformed our understanding of the four giant planets and the outer Solar System, and has now begun to explore interstellar space. 2020 Roger D. Blandford For his foundational contributions to theoretical astrophysics, especially concerning the fundamental understanding of active galactic nuclei, the formation and collimation of relativistic jets, the energy extraction mechanism from black holes, and the acceleration of particles in shocks and their relevant radiation mechanisms. 2021 Victoria M. Kaspi For their contributions to our understanding of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars that are linked to a wide range of spectacular, transient astrophysical phenomena. Through the development of new and precise observational techniques, they confirmed the existence of neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields and characterized their physical properties. Their work has established magnetars as a new and important class of astrophysical objects. Chryssa Kouveliotou 2022 Lennart Lindegren For their lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions.Michael Perryman 2023 Matthew Bailes For the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs). Duncan Lorimer Maura McLaughlin 2024Shrinivas R. Kulkarni For his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects 2025 John Richard Bond For their pioneering research in cosmology, in particular for their studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Their predictions have been verified by an armada of ground-, balloon- and space-based instruments, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.Shaw Prize 2025 George Efstathiou 2026Ken'ichi NomotoFor their studies of stellar explosions and the origin of the elements.Stanford Woosley
Life science and medicine