It's a bit like the worlds best lottery. To enter you devise a method that can generate lots of numbers. And then whoever has the numbers that match reality the best, wins $3 million dollars, a big desk and a really comfy chair.
Except the numbers got to be useful in making predictions about how the world will behave in the future. So, only a little bit like a lottery... a very small, tiny little bit.
I felt that the article glossed over his accomplishments in the tech community. It reads like theoretical physics PhD somehow got rich, and is now awarding a fundamental physics prize.
Prizes like that are prestigious because of history and because everybody knows about them. I don't think the money attached to the prize has as big of an effect as the history.
For a concrete example, the Fields Medal is better known than the Abel Prize despite the fact that it only comes with $15,000 to the Abel Prize's ~$1m.
The Nobel prizes have been awarded for over a century now, and the main purpose of the Nobel Foundation is to ensure that they can keep giving out the prizes forever.
I'm confident that the Nobel prizes will still be around a hundred years from now. Will this Fundamental Physics Prize also be?
The similarity is striking: Nobel donated his prizes to combat his bad conscious about the horrible "side effects" of his invention, the dynamite. I would not be surprised if Millner has a similar motivation. If so, he should be open about it up front (like Nobel was).
I love this guy. First he shakes up Silicon Valley investing, now he is moving to high-quality research.
The most beautiful thing about his approaches to both, is that they are high-impact, high-leverage. In the investing case, he outsources all the filtering work to YC.
In this case, he will outsource the selection work to past laureates.
It is, but they say hes not a dullard. They're trying to emphasize the fact that even though he did not end up becoming a physicist, he's pretty smart.
I represent Russian billionaire holding $3 million in unclaimed physics prizes for you. Please provide your bank and identity details to receive funds.
I've always wondered why someone didn't do this. It can be cheaper to endow a gift that trumps the Nobel than to endow a top business school.
University of Chicago sold the name Booth for a $300 million stake in a fund company. The Nobel pays $1.2 million per year. Milner just gave $27 million, which discounted to perpetuity at 5% is $540 million, but he could have had a similar impact for half the cost.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 73.2 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Milner
It's http://www.fundamentalphysicsprize.org for the record.
For a concrete example, the Fields Medal is better known than the Abel Prize despite the fact that it only comes with $15,000 to the Abel Prize's ~$1m.
I'm confident that the Nobel prizes will still be around a hundred years from now. Will this Fundamental Physics Prize also be?
150k for struggling startups - Horay!
On the other hand he is a close business associate of Alisher Usmanov, who's commonly considered to be, basically, the mafia boss of modern Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisher_Usmanov
If your allegations are true... I'm sorry, I can't finish this sentence.
The most beautiful thing about his approaches to both, is that they are high-impact, high-leverage. In the investing case, he outsources all the filtering work to YC.
In this case, he will outsource the selection work to past laureates.
Brilliant!
That is, they're saying he's not a dullard. I can understand how the phrase "by no means a" could be confusing for someone new to English.
I represent Russian billionaire holding $3 million in unclaimed physics prizes for you. Please provide your bank and identity details to receive funds.
University of Chicago sold the name Booth for a $300 million stake in a fund company. The Nobel pays $1.2 million per year. Milner just gave $27 million, which discounted to perpetuity at 5% is $540 million, but he could have had a similar impact for half the cost.