The world's greatest

A Russian technology investor, who dropped out of his doctorate in physics and earned billions of dollars thanks to his investments in social networks, established an annual award with the highest bonus value in science history.

According to The Guardian, billionaire Yuri Milner, the creator of a massive fortune thanks to investments in Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and Groupon, established the award to recognize advances in basic physics. .

The amount of $ 3 million of each prize went far beyond the value of the prestigious Nobel Prize, which cost $ 1.1 million last year.

Mr. Milner immediately announced that nine prize winners totaled $ 27 million this year.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner

Unlike the Nobel Prize, which was awarded in October, the new prize will be awarded in the first quarter of each year.

In an interview with The Guardian, Milner said the award was for 'the greatest minds in basic physics' and especially for recent advances.

Emphasizing new achievements, Mr. Milner hopes that the award will help physicists who are still involved in research and potentially contribute to the future.

When the Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to basic physicists, award recipients at the end of their careers or beyond because it takes decades for theoretical advances to be proven right in experiments.

For example, a recent discovery of a type of Higgs seed was published 48 years after the Nucleus Research Center (CERN) after it was first published by scientist Peter Higgs, who is hope to win a Nobel Prize at the age of 83.

His name is not on Milner's list of winners because his research was done too long ago.

According to Milner, the new award is not intended to compete with Nobel and differ significantly. The prize may be for young researchers because it does not require verification of theoretical breakthroughs.

And unlike the Nobel Prize, which is divided by up to three people, Milner's award does not limit the number of people.

In addition, anyone can nominate winners online and the awards committee will vote publicly, contrary to secret and secret voting procedures that determine annual Nobel prizes.

Along with the main prize, Milner's fund will award two other awards. The first prize is the annual New Horizons Award for potential young researchers and a special basic physics prize that can be awarded at any time, bypassing the process. regular nomination. Milner said the following award could recognize clear and groundbreaking experimental results.

Mr. Milner, 50, left Moscow National University in 1985 with advanced theoretical physics. After that, he dropped out of his doctorate at the Russian Academy of Sciences to pursue a master's degree in business administration (MBA) at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania (USA).

When it comes to whether the prize is intended to surpass the Nobel prize, at least in the field of money, he said: 'The best minds in physics are basically worthy of that level of recognition.'