UWM researchers are among those being honored for the detection of gravitational waves in space, a discovery announced earlier this year. The international group of more than 1,000 contributing scientists and engineers won the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, the prize recognizes an extraordinary scientific achievement.
One-third of the $3 million award will be shared among the three founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) – Ronald W. P. Drever, Kip S. Thorne and Rainer Weiss.
The remaining $2 million will be equally shared among the 1,012 contributors to the experiment, including 26 members of UWM’s Leonard E Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics.
The researchers include professors Patrick Brady and Jolien Creighton and associate professors Alan Wiseman and Xavier Siemens.
Committees of previous laureates, such as Stephen Hawking, choose the winners from candidates nominated in a process that is online and open to the public.
