Before Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez and Gayle King head to space next week, they attended the out-of-this-world “Oscars of science” on Saturday night in Los Angeles.
The trio — who will blast off on April 14 as part of first all-women space flight since 1963 — attended the annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony where stars also included Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore, recent Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña, Lizzo, Christina Aguilera, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Jodie Foster and many more.
The Breakthrough Prize — created by founding sponsors Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner and Anne Wojcicki — annually gives out six top prizes of $3 million each in categories such as Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics, rather than Best Picture.
Overall prize money at this year’s 11th annual gala totaled $18.75 million, and more than $326 million has been awarded over the past 14 years.
At the innovative event, Hollywood stars and business titans mixed freely with top academics and scientists who made breakthrough discoveries this year in areas such as gene editing, human diseases and the fundamental particles of the universe.
Inside the ceremony at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., Fox Corporation and News Corp. chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch and his wife, molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, were spotted congratulating Jasmine Eyal, the Singapore-based winner of this year’s annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge.
(For her winning entry on mechanogenetic cellular engineering, Eyal and her science teacher Julie Li-Eyal were awarded a total of $400,000 in educational prizes, and Jasmine received a $250,000 college scholarship.)
Also at the bookish bash was News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson, as well as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, artist Jeff Koons, Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, former Alphabet boss Brin and Facebook founder Zuckerberg.
The cerebral ceremony also brought out a galaxy of stars including Gal Gadot, Lily Collins, Salma Hayek Pinault, Gillian Anderson, Paris Hilton, Edward Norton, Olivia Wilde, Rob Lowe, tennis great Maria Sharapova, Jessica Chastain, Danny DeVito, Seth Rogen, Jeremy Strong and the Chainsmokers.
Perry and Sia performed.
For their part, Perry, Sánchez and King will take off on a Blue Origin NS-31 rocket flight, along with former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
Making science even more fashionable, the group appears together on the new cover of Elle.
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