Eight scientists will share the three 2010 Kavli Prizes, which recognize advances in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, and are each worth 1 million dollars.
Jerry Nelson, Ray Wilson, and Roger Angel will share the astrophysics prize for their contributions to the giant telescopes that let us see further back in time and deeper into space than ever before. Donald Eigler, who was the first to pick up an individual atom and move it precisely to another location, and Nadrian Seeman, who invented the field of structural DNA nanotechnology, will split the nanoscience prize, and the neuroscience prize will be split among Thomas Südhof, Richard Scheller, and James Rothman for their work on how brain cells signal each other.

Congratulations to Parastoo Abtahi and Allison Carter, the high school students who won the Perimeter Institute’s “I Love Science” video contest.

Check out Abtahi’s video:

And here’s Carter’s:

Back in March, Francisco Ayala (pictured center) won the 2010 Templeton Prize, valued at more than 1.5 million dollars. Today, he was presented with the award by Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh (pictured right), in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace. “This is a remarkable prize,” Ayala said. “I hope the recognition it bestows will help propagate the notion that science and religion are not in opposition and that, in fact, they may often be complementary.”
As we told you earlier, Ayala will donate the money for graduate scholarships in biological sciences and toward the evolutionary genetics program at the University of California, Irvine, where he’s a professor.

TIME has named paleoanthropologist Tim White, who led the team that discovered the 4.4 million-year-old skeleton known as “Ardi,” to its annual “most influential” list.
Back in October, we asked White how important it is that we find the last common ancestor of chimps and humans, and he told us:

The more important questions for most people involve WHETHER we evolved, and HOW we evolved since we diverged from the lines that led to the extant apes. Anatomy of living forms, fossils, and genetics all independently answer the first question the same way: Yes. And fossils and genetics are also combining to reveal HOW we evolved, although there is a good deal more evidence that will reveal even more. That’s why we go to the field every year to gather more evidence and gain more knowledge. And it’s why we search in rocks of many ages, not just those older than 6 million years.