Hollywood To Lend Its Star Power At 8th Annual Breakthrough Prize Awards

San Francisco – October 28, 2019 – The eighth annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony – known as the “Oscars of Science” – will bring together the stars of Hollywood with luminaries of science and leading figures from the worlds of entertainment, technology, and business to celebrate scientific achievement, on Sunday, Nov. 3, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. The ceremony will air live on National Geographic at 7 PM PT / 10 PM ET.

The show will feature Tyra Banks, Drew Barrymore, LeVar Burton, James Corden, Taraji P. Henson, Allison Janney, Karlie Kloss, and Edward Norton.

The evening will also include performances by Lenny Kravitz and will.i.am, who will be introduced by Adriana Lima.

For the fifth year, the ceremony will be broadcast live at 10pm ET/7pm PT on National Geographic in the United States. A taped, one-hour version of the program will air around the world later in 2019 in 172 countries and in 43 languages.

The theme of the evening is “Seeing the Invisible” – inspired by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration and the 347 scientists worldwide who share the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for creating the first image of a supermassive black hole. Their work exemplifies the power of science and mathematics to reveal hidden, uncharted worlds.

The evening’s festivities will spotlight the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Laureates for their paradigm-shifting research and discovery in the life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics. Winners of the seven, $3 million mainstage prizes (the largest annual science prize) will be joined on the red carpet by dozens of distinguished former laureates.

Together, this year’s laureates probed the heavens to capture the first image of a black hole, imagined gravity at the quantum level, laid the foundation for non-opioid analgesics to extinguish chronic pain, established the biological basis of obesity, and discovered common mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s and dementia.

As in years past, the ceremony will be directed and produced, by Don Mischer, alongside colleagues and executive producers Charlie Haykel and Juliane Hare of Don Mischer Productions.

About Breakthrough Prize

Renowned as the “Oscars of Science,” the Breakthrough Prize recognizes the research achievements of the world’s top scientists. Each prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences (up to four per year), Fundamental Physics (one per year) and Mathematics (one per year). In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics (@ $100,000) and up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes (@ $100,000) are awarded to early-career researchers each year. Laureates attend a live televised award ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and inspire the next generation of scientists. As part of the ceremony schedule, they also engage in a program of lectures and public discussions. The Breakthrough Prize is sponsored by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Selection Committees are composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field. Information on Breakthrough Prize is available at breakthroughprize.org.

About National Geographic

National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and the National Geographic Society, is committed to bringing the world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographic’s media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children’s media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 131 years, and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going further for our consumers and reaching millions of people around the world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation and education. For more information visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Contact

For Breakthrough Prize:

Alice McGillion / 212-843-8039 / AMcGillion@Rubenstein.com
Kristen Bothwell / 212-843-9227 / Kbothwell@Rubenstein.com