Billionaire investor Yuri Milner has set up a prize for theoretical physics.
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From Nature magazine
A billionaire Internet mogul has awarded a record US$27 million to nine physicists for their work on fundamental theory. Yuri Milner, who has made his fortune investing in social-media companies, announced the new Fundamental Physics Prize this morning. The winners work on difficult problems ranging from the Universe's early inflation to string theory (see box).
At $3 million a head, the new prize dwarfs the Nobel Prize, which this year is valued at around SEK8 million ($1.2 million). It also exceeds other well-known awards such as the Kavli Prize and the Shaw Prize, which are valued at $1 million each.
News of the award came as a shock, even to the winners. "It was a complete surprise," says Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who won an award for his work on string theory.
At 50 years old, Milner is something of an overnight sensation in California's Silicon Valley. In the past three years, he has invested heavily in social-media companies including Twitter, Facebook and Spotify. Today his various investment funds are worth an estimated $12 billion, and his private worth is set at $1 billion.
He created the prize out of a love of theoretical physics, which he studied at Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences during the 1980s and early 1990s. The initial prizewinners were chosen by Milner himself. Unlike other awards, such as the Nobel Prize, the new award can be given to theorists whose ideas have not yet been supported by data. The goal is to reward groundbreaking concepts that are driving theoretical thinking forward.
"The intention was to say that science is as important as a shares rating on Wall Street," Milner told Nature. The new money comes with no strings attached, but he hopes that the prize will raise public recognition of theoretical physics and that the award recipients will deliver public lectures that will become as popular as Richard Feynman's famous lectures on physics.
The new awards were not recieved warmly by all in the theoretical community. Some of the winning theories, such as string theory, are basically untestable, says Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York, who is a well-known critic of speculative ideas. And others, such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions, are under serious strain as a result of new measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive particle accelerator located near Geneva, Switzerland (see 'Theorists feast on Higgs data'). "A bunch of people are getting $3 million for doing something that is untestable or has just been shown to be wrong," he says.
Moreover, he says, the prizewinners come from a few elite institutions (four of the nine are from Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study). The net effect may be to reinforce the old guard, rather than encouraging new thinking, he warns.
In response, Milner says that he is not yet convinced that the LHC has disproven ideas such as supersymmetry. "I think the LHC has not shown its full potential; I think we should talk about it in the next few years," he says.
As for the panel's composition, he admits that "any nine names I would have chosen would not be a perfect set". Future prizewinners will be chosen by winners from previous years. As the prize committee gradually expands, Milner believes that any imbalances in the panel will self correct. Each year, the laureates will also select three junior researchers to receive a $100,000 'New Horizons' prize, and, if warranted, a winner of an ad hoc prize.
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12 Comments
Add CommentTwo Einstein quotes might be appropriate here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
"There is no logical way to the discovery of these elementary laws. There is only the way of intuition."
These enormous monetary prizes are given to some of the leaders who have guided theoretical physics over the last 40 years. Unfortunately, this has been a very disappointing period for scientific progress (hype notwithstanding).
Note also that all the money goes to those practicing abstract Platonic approaches to understanding nature (e.g., a substantial number of string theorists).
Personally, I think you would get far more "bang for the buck" if you gave this money to experimental and observational researchers. At least they deal with the real world of nature rather than dabbling in untestable glass-bead games.
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Fractal Cosmology
PS: Watch the low-budget NuSTAR X-ray telescope (starting scientific observations on 8/1/12) blow the aging standard models of cosmology and particle physics out of the water by discovering that the dark matter is not "WIMPs", but rather "primordial" stellar-mass black holes.
I couldn't believe this quote, " "A bunch of people are getting $3 million for doing something that is untestable or has just been shown to be wrong," he says" obviously this person has never met or heard of a politician in their life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's wonderful that the real superstars of the world - the BRAINS - get some recognition in a form (money) that BRAWN has been receiving for far too long for far too little.
Yes!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBetter than giving money to moronic movie stars, football players, silicone-breasted models, etc.
The brain is the most interesting thing created by evolution, yet it is frequently ignored.
I wonder how Sheldon is going to react to not being on the list....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, Sheldon is not real but this idea is a really good idea. It is difficult in this scientific environment to come up with alternative non-traditional theories that are detailed enough to be able to explain the universe around us. They are needed to stretch the imagination and, even if they prove to be wrong, can lead to other theories that may eventually be proven right.
The minds that are able to conceptualize these theories are special indeed and we are all the richer for them. It is good that they get some reward for their efforts just as we all hope to get rewarded for our own efforts.
If you have to put 26 fundamental parameters into the “standard model” by hand,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif you cannot resolve the vacuum energy density crisis,
if you cannot explain the fine structure constant,
if you cannot identify the universal dark matter,
if you cannot predict the masses of fundamental particles,
if you cannot reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics,
if you cannot explain why galaxies exist, and come in radically different flavors like ellipticals and spirals,
then you do not know diddly-squat about the cosmos.
Still, if you like the status quo be my guest to stick with those who have given us the physics "bridge to nowhere".
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Fractal Cosmology
I am not convinced that awarding this prize only to like thinking physicist is smart, for it can be shown that most of the modern ideas can be explained by simply using Maxwell, Quantum Mechanics with understanding of the statistics, and Newton. So to try to understand the world outside of the theories that were built from empirical data is an act of foolishness. Creating make believe scenarios then seeking confirmation does not in itself yield any unverifiable truths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the UK at least, we can leave our legacy to whoever we like (well almost). Good luck to this benefactor; it doesn't make the rest of us any worse off - anyone who can think of a better use of HIS money should perhaps put some of their own where their mouth is (though few seem to think of doing that) A great thing to reward original thinkers and ideas - even the best we have have been 'guilty' of a few mistakes along the way, which form an indispensable part of the path to knowledge anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the critic who disagreed with the string theory reward, I can't for the life of me think why he's a bit 'miffed' (mind you, he wasn't among the 9 I notice)
Sure as Hell glad there are people around with common sense and a solid understanding of eight grade general science to guide the modern physicists. They tend to get lost in the vacuum of their own thoughts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Yuri!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live in an brain-dead country where football (soccer) is more important than science, and a football player can earn more monthly, than all the Nobel prizes put together.
You bring hope for a better future.
While not 'Abuse' as such, this post seems to abuse the purpose of the SciAm Comments Column (presumably to respond intelligently and to speak about the reported subject). It's surely more relevant to some rabid, anti- (almost everything Western or Jewish), highly prejudiced web-site (his/her own perhaps?).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few of the 'obviously scientific' comments worthy of appearing in this column:
- "It is WELL KNOWN that Tagore got the Nobel Prize because he wrote 'Jana Gana Mana' as a hymn to the visiting British emperor";
- "Jews get a lot of Nobel prizes because of their ferocious crimes";
- "The punishment will be commensurate with the crime";
I can't imagine many SciAm readers being tempted to visit the material referred to as it's almost certainly going to be equally, if not more, bizarre. I imagine Indira Ghandi felt really uplifted to hear from him/her.
It's such a shame that there isn't a little more active moderating, to keep such irrelevant drivel out of these columns. A bit of an insult to all those who post genuinely related comments (of whatever slant)
It is very disappointing that Scientific American copies a Nature article [ http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physicists-win-massive-awards-1.11094 ] which features a blogger (Woit) which is not a qualified to comment on the physics in question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe expected result is that he misrepresents the physics. For example, LHC has not been able to exclude supersymmetry yet, and string theory is not basically untestable. (The verdict is still out on whether it is in practice.)
These facts, on Woit and his erroneous claims, are not hard to verify! And the claims hurt science, the science that goes into _Scientific_ American.
So much money is normally used to feed athletes, movie stars and politicians that do not increase our human knowledge about Nature. Why not reward a few scientists that have worked hard to answer the ultimate questions about Reality and the Cosmos? R.A.
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