The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

, it honours

"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 award is dedicated to furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity's spiritual civilization."

The prize has been described as the "Nobel of the East". It was founded by Hong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist

Run Run Shaw Sir Run Run Shaw (19 November 1907 – 7 January 2014), also known as Shao Yifu and Siu Yat-fu, was a Hong Kong entertainment mogul and philanthropist. He was one of the most influential figures in the Asian entertainment industry. He founde ...

(邵逸夫).

Award

The prize consists of three awards in the fields of

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

life science Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

and

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

, 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 (USD$1 million before 2015). The front of the medal bears a portrait of Shaw and the name of the prize in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and

Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took a ...

; the back bears the year, category, laureate's name and a quotation from the Chinese

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

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 Jules A. Hoffmann (; born 2 August 1941) is a Luxembourg-born French biologist. During his youth, growing up in Luxembourg, he developed a strong interest in insects under the influence of his father, Jos Hoffmann. This eventually resulted in the y ...

Bruce Beutler Bruce Alan Beutler ( ; born December 29, 1957) is an American immunologist and geneticist. Together with Jules A. Hoffmann, he received one-half of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for "their discoveries concerning the activatio ...

, Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess,

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell (induced Pluripotent Stem Cell) Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyo ...

, Robert Lefkowitz ,

Brian Schmidt Brian Paul Schmidt (born 24 February 1967) is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU). He was previously a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the University's M ...

, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash,

Michael W. Young Michael Warren Young (born March 28, 1949) is an American biologist and geneticist. He has dedicated over three decades to research studying genetically controlled patterns of sleep and wakefulness within ''Drosophila melanogaster''. At Rock ...

, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Jim Peebles,

Michel Mayor Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (; born 12 January 1942) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory ...

, 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 Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

. Two inaugural prizes were awarded for the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine: Stanley Norman Cohen,

Herbert Boyer Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer (born July 10, 1936) is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, the ...

and Yuet Wai Kan jointly won one of them for their research in DNA while

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemica ...

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 Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and mult ...

Shaw Laureates

File:Richard Doll.jpg, Richard Doll, one of the 2004 winners of the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine File:Shiing-Shen Chern.jpg, Shiing-Shen Chern, the 2004 winner of the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences File:Andrew wiles1-3.jpg, Andrew Wiles, the 2005 winner of the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences File:Vladimir Arnold-1.jpg, Vladimir Arnold, one of the 2008 winners of the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences

Astronomy

Life science and medicine

Mathematical sciences

Notes

* The form and spelling of the names according to the Shaw Prize Foundation. * Sites of the work places of the Laureates at the time of the award. * The rationale from the Shaw Prize Foundation. * Two prizes were awarded for the life science and medicine category in 2004:

Stanley N. Cohen Stanley Norman Cohen (born February 17, 1935) is an American geneticist and the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living ...

, Herbert W. Boyer and Yuet-Wai Kan jointly received one of the prizes (half went to Cohen and Boyer; the other half went to Kan). Richard Doll received the other prize. * Half of the 2008 life science and medicine prize went to Keith H. S. Campbell and Ian Wilmut; the other half went to

References

{{featured list Academic awards Mathematics awards Medicine awards Physics awards Astronomy prizes Science and technology awards Awards established in 2002 International awards Hong Kong awards 2002 establishments in Hong Kong