On May 3, the Selection Committee of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics announced a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics recognizing scientists and engineers contributing to the detection of gravitational waves. The $3 million prize will be shared as follows: the three LIGO founders — Ronald W.P. Drever (Caltech); Kip S. Thorne (Caltech); and Rainer Weiss (MIT) — will share $1 million; and the 1012 contributing scientists, engineers, and staff will share $2 million. The contributors sharing the prize include 1005 authors of the paper describing the discovery of gravitational waves from the numerous institutions involved in LIGO and its sister experiment, the Virgo Collaboration. Also sharing the prize are seven scientists who made important contributions to the success of LIGO.

On May 4, the Gruber Foundation announced that three founders of the LIGO project have been awarded The 2016 Gruber Prize in Cosmology. Ronald W.P. Drever, Kip S. Thorne, and Rainer Weiss have been selected as the recipients of the annual prize in recognition of their contribution to the discovery of gravitational waves. The prize consists of a gold medal and a $500,000 cash prize to be shared between the recipients. The citation praises the recipients for “pursuing a vision to observe the universe in gravitational waves, leading to a first detection,” and recognizes the entire LIGO discovery team for the first observation of gravitational waves.

Thirty seven members of the IndIGO group in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration are part of the discovery team.

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