From Singularity Hub:
Silicon Valley Billionaires Eclipse Nobel Prize, Send $33 Million to Unsuspecting Scientists
Yuri Milner, billionaire Silicon Valley investor, recently joined forces with tech titans Art Levinson, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and their wives Anne Wojcicki (founder of 23andMe) and Priscilla Chan to shower riches on a group of unsuspecting scientists. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (Breakthrough Prize) awarded eleven researchers a total of $33 million ($3 million apiece) for their work in cancer, gene therapy, and stem cell research.
The Breakthrough Prize now joins Milner’s Fundamental Physics Prize—which awarded $27 million ($3 million each) to nine physicists last August—in a new line of Silicon Valley funded philanthropy whose aim is to shine a light on science.
For those keeping count, between the Fundamental Physics Prize (FPP) and the Breakthrough Prize, Yuri Milner, et al., have given away $60 million in science awards to 20 scientists in the last six months. Why? Because, say the benefactors, science and scientists don’t get enough love....MORE
