It was a clean sweep for America yesterday, as five US-based researchers shared the three Shaw Prizes, which are each worth US$ 1 million.

The prizes, which are awarded annually, are “dedicated to furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity’s spiritual civilization” and are sometimes called the ‘Asian Nobels’.

The astronomy prize was shared by astrophysicist Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, physicist Lyman Page of Princeton University and David Spergel, a theoretic astrophysicist, also at Princeton. The three won the prize for their leadership the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a NASA mission to map fluctuations in the microwave background left over from the Big Bang.

Physiologist David Julius of the University of California San Francisco won the prize for life science and medicine for his work on the molecular mechanisms behind the ability of skin to sense pain. The mathematics prize went to Jean Bourgain of Princeton University for work in various areas of mathematical analysis.

The prizes, which were first awarded in 2004, were set up by businessman and media moghul Run Run Shaw.