The Breakthrough of the Year is an annual award for the most significant development in scientific research made by the AAAS journal ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

,'' an

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

covering all branches of science. Originating in 1989 as the ''Molecule of the Year'', and inspired by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' Man of the Year, it was renamed the Breakthrough of the Year in 1996.

Molecule of the Year

* 1989 PCR and

DNA polymerase A DNA polymerase is a member of a family of enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of DNA molecules from nucleoside triphosphates, the molecular precursors of DNA. These enzymes are essential for DNA replication and usually work in groups to create ...

* 1990 the manufacture of synthetic diamonds * 1991

buckminsterfullerene Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, and resembles a soccer ball. Each of its 60 carbon atoms is bonded ...

* 1992 nitric oxide * 1993

p53 p53, also known as Tumor protein P53, cellular tumor antigen p53 (UniProt name), or transformation-related protein 53 (TRP53) is a regulatory protein that is often mutated in human cancers. The p53 proteins (originally thought to be, and often s ...

* 1994

DNA repair DNA repair is a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as radiation can cause DNA da ...

enzyme

Breakthrough of the Year

* 1996: Understanding

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

* 1997:

Dolly the sheep Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female Finnish Dorset sheep and the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was cloned by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear transfer from a ...

, the first mammal to be cloned from adult cells * 1998:

Accelerating universe Observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered duri ...

* 1999: Prospective stem-cell therapies * 2000: Full genome sequencing * 2001: Nanocircuits or

Molecular circuit Molecular scale electronics, also called single-molecule electronics, is a branch of nanotechnology that uses single molecules, or nanoscale collections of single molecules, as electronic components. Because single molecules constitute the smalle ...

* 2002:

RNA interference RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules are involved in sequence-specific suppression of gene expression by double-stranded RNA, through translational or transcriptional repression. Historically, RNAi was known by ...

* 2003:

Dark energy In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univ ...

* 2004: ''Spirit'' rover landed on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

* 2005:

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

in action * 2006: Proof of the

Poincaré conjecture In the mathematical field of geometric topology, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. Originally conjectured ...

* 2007: Human genetic variation * 2008:

Cellular reprogramming Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from a somatic cell. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka's lab in Kyoto, Japan, who showed in ...

* 2009: ''

Ardipithecus ramidus ''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). ''A. ramidus'', unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs ( bipedality) and life i ...

'' * 2010: The first

quantum machine A quantum machine is a human-made device whose collective motion follows the laws of quantum mechanics. The idea that macroscopic objects may follow the laws of quantum mechanics dates back to the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th ce ...

* 2011: HIV treatment as prevention ( HPTN 052) * 2012: Discovery of the Higgs boson * 2013:

Cancer immunotherapy Cancer immunotherapy (sometimes called immuno-oncology) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving on the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer ...

* 2014: ''Rosetta'' comet mission * 2015: CRISPR genome-editing method * 2016:

First observation of gravitational waves The first direct observation of gravitational waves was made on 14 September 2015 and was announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016. Previously, gravitational waves had been inferred only indirectly, via their effect on t ...

* 2017:

Neutron star merger A neutron star merger is a type of stellar collision. It occurs in a fashion similar to the rare brand of type Ia supernovae resulting from merging white dwarf stars. When two neutron stars orbit each other closely, they gradually spiral i ...

( GW170817) * 2018: Single cell sequencing * 2019: A black hole made visible. * 2020: COVID-19 vaccine, developed and tested at record speed * 2021: An AI brings protein structures to all * 2022: James Webb Space Telescope debut

References

{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Physics, Science Science and technology awards American Association for the Advancement of Science Awards established in 1989 Awards established in 1996 Scientific research awards

Molecule of the Year

Breakthrough of the Year

See also

References