Saw a UCLA Today release that UCLA professor Andrea Ghez has been awarded the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy (along with a German researcher) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In addition, Professor Terance Tao (who has won the Fields Prize and a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant...and named by one science writer as one of the ten greatest mathematicians in history) was awarded the Crafoord Prize in Mathematics, along with a Princeton researcher. This is the first time that the Crafoord Prize has been awarded in Math and Astronomy in the same year--that two of the four recipients are UCLA researchers is fantastic.
I'll admit that I had never heard of the Crafoord Prize before--it was founded in 1980 as a way to recognize scientists in fields not covered by the Nobel Prize--like the Nobel Prize, it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and recipients are given them by the King of Sweden, just like the Nobel.
Truly a great achievement for Profs. Ghez and Tao, and for UCLA! You can read more about their work at the UCLA Today story.