The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences gave away $33m to eleven winners, all in one fell swoop
-
The annual science prizes set up by Yuri Milner over the past year are worth $3m apiece. That is more than twice the cash that accompanies a Nobel prize, the awards with which they are inevitably compared. But no one goes into science for the money. Kudos and tenure? Yes.
And this is where the prizes differ. The Nobel prize has a cachet that will not be surpassed in a hurry. For all its faults, and sometimes, because of them, the prizes are seen as the pinnacle of a scientific career. Unlike the Milner prizes, there is a limit on the number of people who can share a Nobel prize. That is grossly outdated in modern science, where breakthroughs rarely come at the hands of so few. But the very same restriction makes the Nobels more exclusive, with all the implications that brings.
The latest prize from Milner, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, is a collaboration with his "old friends" Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sergey Brin of Google. In one fell swoop, the three gave away $33m to eleven winners, none household names, but all major forces in modern biology. Milner set the tone for the windfalls last summer, when he gave $27m to nine scientists for fundamental work in physics.
Next to the prizes from Milner and his friends, the Nobels look antiquated. The nomination and selection process is secretive and obscure, and worthy winners go uncredited because of the arbitrary maximum three-person limit on winners. And the awards ceremony is often bizarre.
Your new post is loading...
