Tech Billionaires Spend Millions on 'Science Oscars', The Koyal Group InfoMag
by Shaun Chenoweth NAYou may have heard that
billionaires Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri Milner, and Jack Ma have
sponsored something called the Breakthrough Prizes. These are $3 million awards
handed out each year to people—generally world-class scientists—doing pioneering
work in such fields as the life sciences,
physics, and mathematics. The big money total is sort of a jab at the paltry $1
million Nobels, and the prizes themselves are meant to celebrate the sciences
and drum up interest in solving the hardest problems. If you haven’t heard
about the awards, that’s OK. You’re in the majority.
The big-name backers of these
prizes tried on Thursday night to bring some added attention to their largesse.
They held a star-studded awards ceremony event at the NASA facility in Mountain View,
Calif. It was in many ways an odd choice, since the place suffers from drastic
budget cuts and has had to fight, fight, and then fight some more to pursue its
cutting-edge science. Nonetheless, folks such as Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey
showed up in their tuxedos, as did Rupert Murdoch, Conan O’Brien, and the evening’s
host, Kevin Spacey. Brin kept it real by sporting a sweatshirt and a backpack.
The celebrities and business
moguls gathered inside Hangar One. It’s one of the few landmarks in Silicon
Valley—a massive structure that used to house dirigibles. Recently, Hangar One
had its chemical-laced outer shell removed, so it’s now just a giant metal
skeleton. This forced the producers of the awards ceremony to build a
makeshift, plastic awards hall inside the Hangar. It ended up looking as if a
tiny greenhouse full of penguins had been injected into the building. A guy who
produces the Oscars dreamed this up, and French Laundry catered the event, so
it had to be good, right?
I’d like to tell you more about
the glamor and heavy discussions inside, and the palpable joy the attendees
felt when they received their awards. But the press, also in tuxedos and best
evening dresses, were cordoned off in a tent outside the glasshouse. They were
allowed to leave briefly to go to the restroom—with the warning, “Don’t wander
around”—and to sit on the floor and watch the proceedings on two small
television screens. As awesome as this sounds, only a couple of the local
technology reporters showed up to enjoy it.
The big news of the evening was
the introduction of a Breakthrough Prize in mathematics. Starting next year, it
will join a similar prize in physics and six prizes in life sciences. And, of
course, there were this year’s winners.
- Michael B.
Green, University of Cambridge, and John H. Schwarz, California Institute of
Technology, for opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification
of forces.
- James
Allison, MD Anderson Cancer Center, for the discovery of T-cell checkpoint
blockade as effective cancer therapy.
- Mahlon
DeLong, Emory University, for defining the interlocking circuits in the brain
that malfunction in Parkinson’s disease. This scientific foundation underlies
the circuit-based treatment of Parkinson’s disease by deep brain stimulation.
- Michael
Hall, University of Basel, for the discovery of Target of Rapamycin (TOR) and
its role in cell growth control.
- Robert
Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, for discoveries leading to the development of controlled
drug-release systems and new biomaterials.
- Richard
Lifton, Yale University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for the
discovery of genes and biochemical mechanisms that cause hypertension.
- Alexander
Varshavsky, California Institute of Technology, for discovering critical
molecular determinants and biological functions of intracellular protein
degradation.
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