In 2023, 7 scientists were awarded The Shaw Prize for their outstanding contributions to their respective fields. The Shaw Prize Special 2023, a TV series that follows the Laureates through their childhood memories, academic journeys and their lives outside of their offices or laboratories, gives us a closer look into their every day as a scientist, a mentor, a colleague, a friend and a loved one in their families.

【The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2023】
FRBs are among the most extreme and mysterious phenomena in astronomy: they are intense bursts of radio emission lasting only a few thousandths of a second that contain as much energy as the Sun emits over several days. The sources of the bursts are smaller than the Earth but are as far away as distant galaxies. In a seminal research paper written in 2007, Bailes, Lorimer, McLaughlin (with collaborators Narkevic and Crawford) found the first FRB; deduced many of the properties of its source, in particular its extreme distance, small size, and enormous energy; estimated the cosmic rate of production of FRBs; and highlighted their potential as cosmological probes.

The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2023 is awarded in equal shares to Matthew Bailes, Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin for the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs).

【The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2023】
The Central Dogma, a theory put forward in 1958 by Francis Crick, is the fundamental concept of life. Three crucial molecules are involved: DNA houses an organism’s genetic blueprint. The DNA genome contains the information required to produce all of an organism’s proteins. Proteins endow cells, tissues, and organisms with their forms and capabilities. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is the intermediate molecule that links DNA to proteins. Particular DNA instructions are converted into individual mRNA molecules to produce specific proteins by a process called gene transcription. Crucially, transcription of specific genes must occur at the correct times and in the correct cellular locations so that the subsets of proteins required for function are only produced when and where they are needed. The gene transcription process has four steps: (1) Initiation; (2) Pausing/Promoter Clearance; (3) Elongation; (4) Termination. In 2006, Roger Kornberg won the Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning how the enzyme called RNA Polymerase converts DNA into mRNA.

The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2023 is awarded in equal shares to Patrick Cramer and Eva Nogales for pioneering structural biology that enabled visualisation, at the level of individual atoms, of the protein machines responsible for gene transcription, one of life’s fundamental processes. They revealed the mechanism underlying each step in gene transcription, how proper gene transcription promotes health, and how dysregulation causes disease.

【The Shaw Prize in Mathematics Sciences 2023】
The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2023 is awarded in equal shares to Vladimir Drinfeld and Shing-Tung Yau, for their contributions related to mathematical physics, to arithmetic geometry, to differential geometry and to Kähler geometry.

They share an interest in mathematical physics. Drinfeld launched with Beilinson the geometric Langlands program, which, to quote Witten, has some common features with aspects of quantum field theory, and yet stems from number theory. Yau worked on mathematical problems arising from general relativity and string theory.

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Chapters:
01:02 Duncan Lorimer & Maura McLaughlin (Shaw Laureates in Astronomy 2023)
12:39 Matthew Bailes (Shaw Laureate in Astronomy 2023)
24:59 Shing-Tung Yau (Shaw Laureate in Mathematical Sciences 2023)
31:32 Vladimir Drinfeld (Shaw Laureate in Mathematical Sciences 2023)
37:04 Eva Nogales (Shaw Laureate in Life Science and Medicine 2023)
42:21 Patrick Cramer (Shaw Laureate in Life Science and Medicine 2023)

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