Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

|Nima Arkani-Hamed

|Original approaches to outstanding problems in particle physics

|University of Toronto,
University of California, Berkeley

|Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

|Invention of inflationary cosmology, and for contributions to the theory for the generation of cosmological density fluctuations arising from quantum fluctuations

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

|For robust quantum memories and fault-tolerant quantum computation using topological quantum phases with anyons and unpaired Majorana modes; topological quantum computing.

|Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics

|California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Currently at KITP and UCSB, Santa Barbara

|Numerous contributions including development of homological mirror symmetry, and the study of wall-crossing phenomena.

|University of Bonn
Moscow State University

|Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Bures-sur-Yvette

|For development of inflationary cosmology, including the theory of new inflation, eternal chaotic inflation and the theory of inflationary multiverse, and for contributing to the development of vacuum stabilization mechanisms in string theory.

|Moscow State University

|Stanford University, Stanford

|Contributions to gauge/gravity duality, relating gravitational physics in a spacetime and quantum field theory on the boundary of the spacetime

|Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Instituto Balseiro, Princeton University

|Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

|Contributions to our understanding of quantum field theory and string theory.

|Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel-Aviv University

|Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

|Opening the path to the realization that all string theories are different limits of the same underlying theory.

|Presidency College, Kolkata
University of Calcutta
IIT Kanpur
Stony Brook University

|Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad

|For applications of topology to physics, non-perturbative duality symmetries, models of particle physics derived from string theory, dark matter detection, and the twistor-string approach to particle scattering amplitudes, as well as numerous applications of quantum field theory to mathematics.

|Brandeis University (B.A.) University of Wisconsin, Madison
Princeton University (PhD)

|Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

|Stephen Hawking

|For his discovery of Hawking radiation from black holes, and his deep contributions to quantum gravity and quantum aspects of the early universe.{{cite web|title=Fundamental Physics Prize - News|url=http://www.fundamentalphysicsprize.org/news/news3|publisher=Fundamental Physics Prize|access-date=11 December 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121214063511/http://www.fundamentalphysicsprize.org/news/news3|archive-date=14 December 2012}}

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|For their leadership role in the scientific endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

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|Alexander Polyakov

|For his many discoveries in field theory and string theory including the conformal bootstrap, magnetic monopoles, instantons, confinement/de-confinement, the quantization of strings in non-critical dimensions, gauge/string duality and many others. His ideas have dominated the scene in these fields during the past decades.

|Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

|Princeton University, Princeton

|Michael Green, John Henry Schwarz

|For opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces.

|Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley; and
Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

|California Institute of Technology and Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

|Saul Perlmutter and members of the Supernova Cosmology Project;
Brian P. Schmidt, Adam Riess and members of the High-Z Supernova Team.

|For the most unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing as had been long assumed.

|Harvard, UC Berkeley (Perlmutter), University of Arizona, Harvard (Schmidt), and MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley (Riess)

|University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Australian National University;Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute

|Yifang Wang;
Kam-Biu Luk and the Daya Bay Team

| rowspan=5|For the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.

|Nanjing University (Wang)

University of Hong Kong, Rutgers University (Luk)

|Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California, Berkeley

|Niigata University, Tohoku University

|Iwate Prefectural University, Japan

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|High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Japan

|Dalhousie University, California Institute of Technology

|Queen's University, Canada

|Saitama University, University of Tokyo (Kajita)

|Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, Japan

|Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss

| rowspan=2|For the observation of gravitational waves, opening new horizons in astronomy and physics.{{cite web|title=Fundamental Physics Prize - News|url=https://breakthroughprize.org/News/32|publisher=Fundamental Physics Prize (2016)|access-date=4 May 2016}}

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|Joseph Polchinski

| rowspan="2" |For transformative advances in quantum field theory, string theory, and quantum gravity.{{cite web|url=https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/1|title=Breakthrough Prize – Laureates|website=breakthroughprize.org}}

|University of California, Berkeley

|University of California, Santa Barbara

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Princeton University

|Harvard University

|Charles L. Bennett

| rowspan="3" |For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies.{{cite web|url=https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/1|title=Breakthrough Prize – Laureates |website=breakthroughprize.org}}

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|Johns Hopkins University

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|University of British Columbia

Lyman Page Jr.,

David N. Spergel and the WMAP Science Team (Chris Barnes, Olivier Doré, Joanna Dunkley, Ben Gold, Michael Greason, Mark Halpern, Robert Hill, Al Kogut, Eiichiro Komatsu, David Larson, Michele Limon, Stephan Meyer, Michael Nolta, Nils Odegard, Hiranya Peiris, Kendrick Smith, Greg Tucker, Licia Verde, Janet Weiland, Ed Wollack, E. Wollack, Ned Wright){{cite web|url=https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/index.cfm?fuseAction=home.main&&navOrgCode=660|title=Congratulations to Charles Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr., David Spergel and the WMAP Science Team for winning the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics|author=|date=3 December 2017|website=science.gsfc.nasa.gov|publisher=NASA|access-date=8 December 2017}}

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|Princeton University

|Jocelyn Bell Burnell

|For fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community.{{cite web |title=Jocelyn Bell Burnell |url=https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/1/L3830 |publisher=Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics |access-date=November 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221102030504/https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/1/L3830 |archive-date=November 2, 2022}}

| University of Glasgow (BSc)
University of Cambridge (PhD)

|University of Oxford and University of Dundee

|Charles Kane, Eugene Mele

|For new ideas about topology and symmetry in physics, leading to the prediction of a new class of materials that conduct electricity only on their surface.[https://breakthroughprize.org/News/47 Laureates 2019]

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|University of Pennsylvania

|Sergio Ferrara

| rowspan="3" |For the invention of supergravity, in which quantum variables are part of the description of the geometry of spacetime.{{Cite web|url=https://breakthroughprize.org/News/53|title=Breakthrough Prize – $3 Million Special Breakthrough Prize In Fundamental Physics Awarded To Discoverers Of Supergravity|website=breakthroughprize.org|access-date=2019-08-06}}

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|CERN, UCLA

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|Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University

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|Stony Brook University

|The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

| For the first image of a supermassive black hole, taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes.[https://breakthroughprize.org/News/54 Laureates 2020]

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| The EHT Collaboration consists of 13 stakeholder institutes:

• the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• the University of Arizona
• the University of Chicago
• the East Asian Observatory
• Goethe University Frankfurt
• Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (part of the Center for Astrophysics)
• Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique (IRAM, itself a collaboration between the French CNRS, the German Max Planck Society, and the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional),
• Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano
• Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
• MIT Haystack Observatory
• National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
• Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
• Radboud University

|Eric Adelberger, Jens H. Gundlach and Blayne Heckel

| For precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy, and establish limits on couplings to dark matter.[https://breakthroughprize.org/News/60 Breakthrough Prize In Fundamental Physics 2021]

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|University of Washington

|Steven Weinberg

|For his continuous leadership in fundamental physics, with broad impact across particle physics, gravity and cosmology, and for communicating science to a wider audience.[https://breakthroughprize.org/News/61 Special Breakthrough Prize In Fundamental Physics 2021]

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|University of Texas at Austin

|Hidetoshi Katori

| rowspan="2" |For outstanding contributions to the invention and development of the optical lattice clock, which enables precision tests of the fundamental laws of nature.[https://breakthroughprize.org/News/65 Breakthrough Prize In Fundamental Physics 2022]

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|University of Tokyo and RIKEN

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|National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado

|Charles H. Bennett

| rowspan="4" |For foundational work in the field of quantum information.{{cite news |title=Winners Of The 2023 Breakthrough Prizes In Life Sciences, Mathematics And Fundamental Physics Announced |url=https://breakthroughprize.org/News/73 |access-date=November 1, 2022 |publisher=Breakthrough Prize |date=September 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221101075709/https://breakthroughprize.org/News/73 |archive-date=November 1, 2022}}

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|IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

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|Université de Montréal

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|Oxford University

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|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|John Cardy

| rowspan="2" |For profound contributions to statistical physics and quantum field theory, with diverse and far-reaching applications in different branches of physics and mathematics.{{Cite web |date=September 14, 2023 |title=BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE ANNOUNCES 2024 LAUREATES IN LIFE SCIENCES, FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS, AND MATHEMATICS |url=https://breakthroughprize.org/News/83 |access-date=September 14, 2023 |website=BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE}}

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|All Souls College, University of Oxford

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|Stony Brook University

|ATLAS collaboration

CMS collaboration

ALICE collaboration

LHCb collaboration

|For detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.{{Cite web |date=2025-04-05 |title=Breakthrough Prize Announces 2025 Laureates in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics |url=https://breakthroughprize.org/News/91 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250406015731/https%3A%2F%2Fbreakthroughprize.org%2FNews%2F91 |archive-date=2025-04-06 |access-date=2025-04-06 |website=breakthroughprize.org |language=en}}

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(special)

|Gerard 't Hooft

|For fundamental insights into gauge theory and the standard model.

|Utrecht University

|Utrecht University

|Niklas Beisert

|Development of powerful exact methods to describe a quantum gauge theory and its associated string theory

| ETH Zurich

|Far-reaching new insights about duality, gauge theory, and geometry, and specially for his work linking theories in different dimensions in most unexpected ways

|Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

|Dynamics of four-dimensional field theories and in particular his proof (with Schwimmer) of the “a-theorem”, which has solved a long-standing problem

|Weizmann Institute of Science

| Freddy Cachazo

| Uncovering numerous structures underlying scattering amplitudes in gauge theories and gravity

| Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

|Pioneering contributions to the study of string theory and quantum field theory; and in particular his work on the connection between the equations of fluid dynamics and Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity

|Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

|Developing new techniques in conformal field theory, reviving the conformal bootstrap program for constraining the spectrum of operators and the structure constants in 3D and 4D CFT's

|Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University

|Sean Hartnoll

|For applying holographic methods to obtain remarkable new insights into strongly interacting quantum matter.

|Stanford University

|For pioneering the “simplified models” framework for new physics searches at the Large Hadron Collider, as well as spearheading new experimental searches for dark sectors using high-intensity electron beams.

|Perimeter Institute

| rowspan="4" |For fundamental ideas about entropy in quantum field theory and quantum gravity.

|CONICET

|Universidad Nacional de Cuyo

|University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

|Kyoto University

|B. Andrei Bernevig

| rowspan="2" |For outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics, especially involving the use of topology to understand new states of matter.

|Princeton University

|Stanford University

| rowspan="2" |For outstanding contributions to theoretical cosmology.

|The University of Texas at Austin

|Stanford University

|For outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics, especially involving the use of topology to understand new states of matter.

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|For penetrating and incisive studies of supersymmetric quantum field theories.

|University of Tokyo

|Frans Pretorius

|For creating the first computer code capable of simulating the inspiral and merger of binary black holes, thereby laying crucial foundations for interpreting the recent observations of gravitational waves; and for opening new directions in numerical relativity.

|Princeton University

| rowspan="2" |For imaginative joint work on higher spin gravity and its holographic connection to a new soluble field theory.

|Princeton University

|Harvard University

| rowspan="3" |For pioneering a wide range of new experimental probes of fundamental physics.

|Perimeter Institute

|Stanford University

|University of California, Berkeley

|Christopher Hirata

|For fundamental contributions to understanding the physics of early galaxy formation and to sharpening and applying the most powerful tools of precision cosmology

|Ohio State University

|For profound new insights on quantum chaos and its relation to gravity.

|Institute for Advanced Study and Stanford University

|For the co-invention of van der Waals heterostructures, and for the new quantum Hall phases that he discovered with them.

|University of California, Santa Barbara

|Rana Adhikari

| rowspan="2" |For research on present and future ground-based detectors of gravitational waves.

|California Institute of Technology

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

| rowspan="3" |For fundamental insights about quantum information, quantum field theory, and gravity.

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|Harvard University

|Stanford University

|For pioneering predictions of the electromagnetic signal from a neutron star merger, and for leadership in the emerging field of multi-messenger astronomy.

|Columbia University

|Xie Chen

| rowspan="4" |For incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them.

|California Institute of Technology

|University of Washington

|University of Chicago

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

| rowspan="3" |For the development of novel techniques to extract fundamental physics from astronomical data.

|Princeton University

|University of Amsterdam

|Perimeter Institute

| rowspan="2" |For profound contributions to the understanding of quantum field theory.

|McGill University

|Perimeter Institute and ICTP-SAIFR

|Tracy Slatyer

| rowspan="1" |For major contributions to particle astrophysics, from models of dark matter to the discovery of the “Fermi Bubbles.”

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

| rowspan="4" |For advances in the detection of sub-GeV dark matter especially in regards to the SENSEI experiment.

|Stony Brook University

|Fermilab

|Tel Aviv University

|University of Oregon

| rowspan="4" | For calculating the quantum information content of a black hole and its radiation.

|Institute for Advanced Study

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|University of California, Santa Barbara

|University of California, Berkeley

|For high precision electronic and magnetic measurements that have profoundly changed our understanding of high temperature superconductors and unconventional insulators.

|University of Cambridge

| rowspan="4" |For leadership in laying foundations for electromagnetic observations of sources of gravitational waves, and leadership in extracting rich information from the first observed collision of two neutron stars.

|Texas Tech University

|California Institute of Technology

|California Institute of Technology

|University of California, Berkeley

| rowspan="4" |For pioneering theoretical work formulating novel phases of non-equilibrium quantum matter, including time crystals.

|Harvard University

|Stanford University

|University of Tokyo

|University of California, Berkeley

| For the discovery of major performance enhancements to niobium superconducting radio-frequency cavities, with applications ranging from accelerator physics to quantum devices.

| Fermilab

| rowspan="6" | For the development of optical tweezer arrays to realize control of individual atoms for applications in quantum information science, metrology, and molecular physics.

| University of Chicago

| California Institute of Technology

| JILA

| Harvard University

| University of Innsbruck
Austrian Academy of Sciences

| Princeton University

|Vanderbilt University

| rowspan="3" |For contributions to our understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe and the development of new tools to extract fundamental physics from galaxy surveys.

|Massachusetts Institute of Technology

|Columbia University and Simons Foundation

|University of Florence

| rowspan="4" |For the prediction, discovery, and modeling of dust traps in young circumstellar disks, solving a long-standing problem in planet formation.

|University of Chile

|University College London

|Leiden Observatory

|Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

|For the discovery of Haah's code, in which fractal conservation laws emerge, and other models bringing discrete mathematical structures to physics.

|Stanford University

| rowspan="3" |For demonstrating new extreme adaptive optics techniques that will allow the direct detection of the smallest exoplanets.

|Leiden Observatory, Leiden University &

Steward Observatory, University of Arizona

|University of California, Santa Cruz

|National Research Council Canada