On Sunday, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner gave out US $21 million as several Breakthrough Prizes as awards to scientists and those who are in the field who made significant scientific accomplishments.
The Breakthrough Prize is created three years ago along with tech giants Marck Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergey Brin of Google and Anne Wojcicki of 23andme. Each prize is worth about $3 million which is three times as much as the Nobel Prize.
One of the Breakthrough recipients will be split among the 1,370 physicists as they will be honored with a cash prize of $3 million for their in depth work regarding neutrino oscillation theory which is an event quantum mechanics. The prize will become more of a symbol of prestige rather than of monetary value as several team leaders will split two thirds of the cash, leaving $1 million to be divided among the others or around $700 for each physicist.
Milner says that he would love to give $3 million for each one however, we are not there yet. He also adds how scientists are now making breakthroughs via consortium as opposed to a handful working in relative isolation, that ultimately raises the chances of sharing prizes in the future.
Researchers from the fields of life sciences are also among the winners as they excelled in optogenetics and sequencing of ancient genomes, garnering five prizes. One prize went to mathematics courtesy of a University of California, Berkeley professor, regarding low dimensional topology and geometric group theory.
Some eight scientists who are still in their early careers in mathematics and physics already won as much as $100,000 in awards.
Milner aims to give back to the sciences with the same emphasis and cultural impact as sports or entertainment however, on Friday, he admits it was still early to see if his work is making any effects. The ceremony's broadcast will be under a major U.S. network, Fox, where Milner says that this is a sign that things are now moving to the right direction.
The Russian billionaire was once a physics PhD student from Moscow who later dropped out in order to move to the U.S. in 1990. To date, Milner already backed some of the world's biggest technology giants such as Facebook.
Apart from this, Milner is also supporting the search for intelligent alien life where he promised to fund $100 million to search space via radio and light signals.