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2014 Kavli Prizes Honor Cosmic Inflation, Memory Studies, Microscopy Innovation
Scientists who developed the theory of cosmic inflation, pushed the limits of microscopy, and discovered brain networks devoted to memory and cognition received top honors at this year’s Kavli Prizes. Awarded once every two years, the Kavli Prizes offer $1 million, a gold medal, and a scroll to exceptional researchers in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience—those who work to unravel the natures of big, small, and complex forces around us. This year’s winners were announced on Thursday, May 29 in Oslo, Norway and simulcasted at the 2014 World Science Festival. Alan Guth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Andrei Linde (Stanford University) and Alexei Starobinsky (Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics) won the 2014 Kavli Prize in astrophysics for their work in formulating the theory that the universe exponentially expanded in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. “When I first came up with the idea, I was extremely nervous that it would be wrong in some obvious way,” Guth, who was in attendance at the Festival’s Kavli Breakfast, said. “Fortunately, it didn’t fall apart.” The 2014 Kavli Breakfast Linde, whose work has focused on the possibility of multiple Big Bangs occurring, giving rise to a many-faceted multiverse, told the Kavli …
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