Four mainland scholars honored with 'Nobel Prize of China' awards

Four mainland scientists have won this year's Future Science Prize, also known as the "Nobel Prize of China."

Winners in each category will receive US$1 million (HK$7.8 million), come October, in a ceremony in Hong Kong that is expected to see top scientists around the globe attend.

The awards were announced in a simultaneous press conference in Beijing and Hong Kong on Friday.

The life science prize was won by Deng Hongkui of Peking University, while the physical science prize went to Zhang Tao of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Li Yadong of Tsinghua University.

The mathematics and computer science prize went to Sun Binyoung of Zhejiang University.

Deng was recognized for his pioneering work on using small molecules to change cell fate and state, in particular to reprogram somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells.

Zhang and Li, meanwhile, was awarded for their seminal contributions to the development and application of Single-Atom Catalysis.

As for Sun, he has made significant contributions to the representation theory of Lie groups, focusing particularly on the multiplicity one theorems for classical groups, the theory of theta correspondence, and the non-vanishing hypothesis in Rankin-Selberg convolutions.

Speaking at the conference, Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said the city will hold a series of science popularization activities, including a “Future Science Prize Week”,  as one of the megaevents in Hong Kong for the second half of the year.