The Gruber Foundation, a Type 1 supporting organization operated and supervised by Yale University, has announced the recipients of the 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize and Gruber Neuroscience Prize.

The cosmology prize honors cosmologists, astronomers, astrophysicists, or scientific philosophers for a theoretical, analytical, conceptual, or observational discovery leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the universe. This year's recipients are Marc Kamionkowski (Johns Hopkins University), Uroš Seljak (University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and Matias Zaldarriaga (Institute for Advanced Study), who developed techniques essential for studying the early universe. Their seminal work, two papers published in 1997, demonstrated a mathematical means of using radiation from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — relic radiation that dates to when atoms and radiation emerged from the developing universe's primordial plasma — to infer the nature of the universe all the way back to the first fraction of a second of its existence. In addition to a share of the $500,000 award, the three physicists will each receive a gold medal.

The neuroscience prize will be shared by Christine Petit (Institut Pasteur and Collège de France) and Christopher A. Walsh (Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute) for their groundbreaking work on the genetic and molecular mechanisms behind the development of inherited neurodevelopmental disorders. Petit is being recognized for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms involved with hearing and hearing loss, while Walsh is being honored for his novel and fundamental insights into the development of the cerebral cortex and genetic brain disorders, including inherited forms of epilepsy and autism spectrum disorder.

"These remarkable scientists have had a profound impact on our understanding of how the brain functions, both in health and disease," said Frances Jensen, chair of the Department of Neurology and co-director of the Penn Medicine Translational Neuroscience Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, who chairs the selection advisory board for the neuroscience prize. "Their research has also led to the development of exciting and promising new genetic therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders."