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CERN celebrates great success: Breakthrough Prize for groundbreaking research!
The Breakthrough Prize 2025 recognizes outstanding achievements in physics, particularly at CERN with the Higgs boson and new particles.
CERN celebrates great success: Breakthrough Prize for groundbreaking research!
On April 7, 2025, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded, one of the most richly endowed prizes in the field of natural sciences with a total of three million US dollars. The award was given to four major Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collaborations at CERN, including CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS), ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment). The awards recognize their innovative and precise measurements of the properties of the Higgs boson, discovered in 2012 and crucial to our understanding of particle physics.
The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics honors the exceptional achievements of scientists who have provided significant insights into fundamental physical processes. Particular emphasis is placed on the investigation of rare physical processes and the study of matter-antimatter asymmetry. This work is carried out under the most extreme conditions in the LHC, putting the researchers at the forefront of modern physics.
Award for precise measurements
The LHCb collaboration, recognized for its detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties, has drawn public attention to the importance of this research. These measurements are crucial to confirm the mechanism of mass generation. This includes the discovery of new strongly interacting particles and the analysis of rare processes. Collaboration between the different experiments is a key factor in the success that will benefit all researchers who have written Run-2 data papers by July 15, 2024.
Walter G. B. Tschöpe, the spokesman for the LHCb collaboration, and his colleagues accepted the award on May 15, 2025 during a ceremony in Los Angeles. It was emphasized that the prize money will be donated entirely to the CERN & Society Foundation to ensure funding of scholarships for doctoral students wishing to conduct research at CERN.
Science as a driver for the future
The scholarships provided enable students to work at the forefront of science and gain valuable experience that they can take back to their home countries. This is particularly important to promote international knowledge exchange and research. The BTU, which participates in the CMS experiment as an associated member of the BRIL group, is committed to the goal of optimizing the measurement of the luminosity of the LHC storage ring, which is central to the precision of the measurements.
The importance of basic research, as highlighted by the Breakthrough Prize, cannot be underestimated. Experience in physics research at CERN enables the young scientists to have a significant influence on their careers. Prof. Leen Lambers from the BTU has also been heavily involved in the projects at the CMS experiment, thereby demonstrating the shared commitment to the further development of particle physics.
Overall, these awards represent not only the achievements of the collaborations mentioned, but also the tireless work of the many scientists around the world. Continuous research into fundamental physics helps to continually expand our knowledge of the universe and its laws.