The Breakthrough Prize today announced that ten-time Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams will perform at its third annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony, held to honor the world’s top scientists and mathematicians, on Sunday, November 8 in Silicon Valley.
Williams will be joined at the exclusive ceremony by a star-studded lineup of presenters, including Academy Award winner Russell Crowe, Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, Lily Collins, and Thomas Middleditch and Martin Starr of HBO’s Silicon Valley. As previously announced, Emmy-nominated Cosmos executive producer and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane will serve as the ceremony’s host.
The Breakthrough Prize ceremony is hosted by co-founders Sergey Brin (Google) and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), Jack Ma (Alibaba) and Cathy Zhang, Yuri Milner (DST Global) and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Priscilla Chan, along with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.
The ceremony will be produced and directed by Emmy Award-winning Don Mischer Productions and will be broadcast live on National Geographic Channel at 10/9c, with a one-hour version of the ceremony scheduled for FOX on Sunday, Nov. 29, at 7-8 p.m. ET/PT. Additionally, the one-hour version will air globally on the National Geographic Channel in 171 countries and 45 languages.
The Breakthrough Prize honors those at the forefront of the fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics fields, and will honor the recipient of the inaugural Breakthrough Junior Challenge. Each of the Breakthrough Prize laureates receives a $3 million prize, and a total of seven prizes will be awarded. This year, for the first time, the ceremony will also feature the Breakthrough Junior Challenge for students, which will award $400,000 in educational prizes to a student whose original video brings to life a scientific or mathematical idea or principle.