Shaw Prize-winning scientists and mathematician share invaluable life lessons
- Four recipients of 2024’s prestigious international award reveal secrets of their groundbreaking achievements
When experts at the top of their fields offer advice and words of wisdom, we certainly should pay attention and listen, especially if they are recipients of the Shaw Prize – a prestigious annual international honour awarded to individuals who have made recent groundbreaking contributions to modern civilisation through their academic and scientific work.
In May this year, the 21st year since the award was first presented, the winners of the Shaw Prize for 2024 were announced. The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine is being awarded jointly to Swee Lay Thein, senior investigator and chief of the sickle cell branch of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and Stuart Orkin, David G Nathan distinguished professor of paediatrics at Harvard Medical School, US.
The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences is to be awarded to Peter Sarnak, Eugene Higgins professor of mathematics at Princeton University, US, while the Shaw Prize in Astronomy is being awarded to Shrinivas R Kulkarni, George Ellery Hale professor of astronomy and planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, US. Each Shaw Prize carries a monetary award of US$1.2 million.
The Post speaks to each of these Shaw Laureates to learn about their challenging career journeys, the secrets of their success and, more importantly, their individual mindsets and common traits which have helped them in their ventures – the invaluable life lessons that everyone, no matter their chosen field, can apply, too.
Expect to be learning your whole life and enjoy it …
Whether you are a scientist, musician or artist, if you are not willing to keep learning and enjoy what you do, then you are in the wrong job, says Swee Lay Thein, a Malaysian haematologist, doctor and scientist. She and Stuart Orkin have been jointly awarded the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine for their discovery of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the fetal-to-adult haemoglobin production switch.
This has made possible a highly effective genome-editing therapy for sickle cell anaemia and beta thalassaemia – two devastating blood diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.
