HONG KONG -- Four scientists won the Shaw Prize this year for their outstanding work in the prize's three categories, the Shaw Prize Foundation announced on Tuesday.

The Astronomy prize is awarded in equal shares to John Richard Bond, a professor from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, and George Efstathiou, an astrophysics professor from the University of Cambridge, for their pioneering research in cosmology, leading to precise determinations of the age, geometry, and mass-energy content of the universe.

The Life Science and Medicine prize went to Wolfgang Baumeister, director emeritus and scientific member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, for his pioneering development and use of cryogenic-electron tomography, an imaging technique that enables three-dimensional visualisation of biological samples, including proteins, macromolecular complexes, and cellular compartments as they exist in their natural cellular settings.

The Mathematical Sciences prize went to Kenji Fukaya, a professor from the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications and the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center of Tsinghua University, for his pioneering work on symplectic geometry, especially for envisioning the existence of a category, nowadays called the Fukaya category.

Each prize carries a cash award of $1.2 million. The award ceremony will be held in Hong Kong on Oct 21.

Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, the Shaw Prize is an international recognition of remarkable scientific achievements. It is administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation and has been awarded annually since 2004.