$22m science prize winners announced

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34766069

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The winners of science and maths prizes worth $22m have been announced at a glittering ceremony in Silicon Valley.

The Breakthrough Prize is backed by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, among others.

Prizes were awarded in different categories: life sciences, physics and mathematics.

The awards gala in California was hosted by comedy actor and writer Seth MacFarlane.

"By challenging conventional thinking and expanding our knowledge over the long term, scientists can solve the biggest problems of our time," said Mr Zuckerberg.

In the life sciences, prizes - worth $3m each - were awarded to five individual researchers:

A single award for fundamental physics was shared by five pioneering neutrino particle experiments - whose teams together number more than 1,300 researchers. This is the same research field honoured by this year's physics Nobel.

The five experiments were the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, the Daya Bay facility in China, along with KamLand, K2K/T2K and Super-Kamiokande, which are all located in Japan.

The mathematics prize went to Ian Agol, who studies phenomena known as three-dimensional manifolds.

Other presenters at the gala included actors Russell Crowe and Hilary Swank, while musician Pharrell Williams gave live performance.

The Breakthrough Prize was founded by Brin and Anne Wojcicki, who runs genetic testing firm 23andMe, Chinese businessman Jack Ma, and Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and his wife Julia.