Meet The 12 People Who Won $3 Million For Their Breakthroughs In Science And Math

A record 12 Breakthrough Prizes were announced on Sunday.

Created by Silicon Valley giants from Facebook and Google in February 2013, the Breakthrough Prize is a $33 million annual pot that is split among 11 people - or in the case of this year, 12 people - to reward life science and math researchers. An individual Breakthrough Prize is worth roughly three times the value of the Nobel Prize.

This year, six Breakthrough Prizes went to researchers in the life sciences, and five mathematicians won for their work; though in the future, just one prize a year will go to a mathematician.