The Fundamental Physics Prize foundation today announced that a $3,000,000 special Fundamental Physics Prize will go to seven scientists who led the effort to discover a Higgs-like particle at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The special prize honours some of the leaders of the LHC, CMS and ATLAS projects from the time the LHC was approved by the CERN Council in 1994. Peter Jenni, Fabiola Gianotti, Michel Della Negra, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Guido Tonelli, Joe Incandela and Lyn Evans will share a prize, awarded "in exceptional circumstances" for their leadership roles in the endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC.

“It’s fantastic news," says Lyn Evans, who led the LHC project during the construction period. "The tremendous performance of ATLAS, CMS and the LHC is witness to the skill and dedication of our many collaborators which we are very proud to represent”.

Jim Virdee of the CMS collaboration says that in conceiving, building and operating the CMS experiment the collaboration has advanced Science. "For me it is an honour and privilege to be associated with this advance," he says. "Bravo to the CMS collaboration for their dedication to make the experiment one of the most beautiful scientific instruments ever."

Russian tech-investor Yuri Milner launched the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation in July this year to advance our knowledge of the universe. The $27 million foundation will award $3 million every year to researchers in fundamental physics, who are then invited to select recipients of future prizes.

The foundation also announced the winners of this year's Physics Frontiers Prize and the New Horizons in Physics Prize for junior researchers. The winner of the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize will be announced at a ceremony at CERN on 20 March 2013.

“It is a great honour for the LHC’s achievement to be recognized in this way,” says CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer. “The Fundamental Physics Prize underlines the value of fundamental physics to society, and I am delighted that the Foundation has chosen to hold its first award ceremony at CERN.

Professor Haijun Yang from INPAC of Shanghai Jiao Tong University participated in the ATLAS collaboration. He is one of the ATLAS group production contact persons and made significant contributions to the discovery of Higgs-like particle at LHC. Because of his major contributions, he was invited to give a talk about “Higgs Property Measurement with ATLAS” at the Hadron Collider Physics Symposium (HCP2012) at Kyoto University, Japan on November 12-16, 2012.