Five chosen for inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics

New York Times : In 2012 Yuri Milner, a Russian businessman, established the Breakthrough Prize in Physics. And then he followed it up with a similar prize for life sciences. Each of the prize recipients also received $3 million. Now, Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have financed a Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics and chosen five mathematicians as the initial winners: Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University on Long Island and Imperial College London; Maxim Kontsevich of the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France; Jacob Lurie of Harvard University; Terence Tao of UCLA; and Richard Taylor of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Kontsevich had previously received one of the initial prizes in physics and Donaldson, Kontsevich, and Tao have each been awarded the Fields Medal, the best-known award in mathematics. In the future Milner plans to award eight Breakthrough Prizes each year, six in the life sciences and one each in math and physics.