February 23, 2015

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Science Wins at the Oscars

Science was in the spotlight at the 87th annual Academy Awards ceremony Sunday night, from actors playing scientists to winners thanking them. Steve Mirsky reports

By Steve Mirsky

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It was a good night for science at the 87th Academy Awards ceremony Sunday night. Julianne Moore won the Best Actress prize for her role in Still Alice, a movie that shines a light on Alzheimer’s disease. Eddie Redmayne took home the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of iconic astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, with Benedict Cumberbatch looking on, nominated for playing computer scientist Alan Turing.

The ceremony also included a brief synopsis of the February 7th event at which the Scientific and Technical Achievement awards were bestowed. For example, Larry Hornbeck won an award for the invention of digital micromirror technology, while at Texas Instruments. That invention is responsible for what’s known as DLP cinema projection to have become the standard system in use in the motion picture industry.

Finally, Paul Franklin, one of the winners for Best Visual Effects for the movie Interstellar had this to say in his acceptance speech: “And thank you to one of the smartest people on Earth, professor Kip Thorne of CalTech, and all the explorers of science, who show us the universe in all its amazing and terrifying beauty.”

—Steve Mirsky

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

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Science Wins at the Oscars