While Vogue’s glamorous Met Gala is “the Super Bowl of fashion,” and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been dubbed “nerd prom,” the annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony is known as “the Oscars of science.”
Indeed the stars aligned at the event organized by entrepreneur physicist Yuri Milner, along with a constellation of business moguls, media mavens and tech tycoons, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and his fiancée, molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, Sergey Brin, Kim Kardashian, Robert Downey Jr. and Bradley Cooper.
The night’s emcee on the roof of LA’s Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, James Corden, cleverly quipped, “The only agent being thanked tonight will be hydrogen cyanide.”
The 10th annual awards show honored “scientists changing the world,” with $3 million prizes awarded in the categories of life sciences, physics and math.
Murdoch and Zhukova were seen posing for pics with Sia Godika, 17, winner of $400,000 and the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
The night also made for some eye-popping mashups.
At one table, “Barbie” star Margot Robbie and Jessica Chastain were seated with super-producer Brian Grazer and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind Technologies.
Also spotted: Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, Anne Wojcicki, Milner’s artist wife and cohost Julia Milner, Brie Larson, Olivia Wilde, Lizzo, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, Vin Diesel, Alicia Keys and Rob Lowe.
Kardashian reportedly arrived late to pose on the carpet.
But Musk gave any stars a run for their money by striking some exaggerated poses on a step and repeat, and telling reporters he thinks an AI candidate could win the White House. (He also reportedly noted he’s challenged Vladimir Putin to a one-on-one fight.)
Adding to the night’s formula, Charlie Puth, David Foster and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine performed.
