Yuri Milner, a Russian investor, co-owner of Mail.Ru Group and the investment foundation Digital Sky Technologies (DST), started a new annual scholarly award Fundamental Physics Prize. This information appeared on the award’s official web-site, which was launched on July 31.
According to the information on the site, “The Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing our knowledge of the Universe at the deepest level by awarding annual prizes for scientific breakthroughs, as well as communicating the excitement of fundamental physics to the public. Two categories of prizes will be awarded for past achievements in the field of fundamental physics, with the aim of providing the recipients with more freedom and opportunity to pursue even greater future accomplishments.”
Besides the main award, Milner has started two additional prizes. The first, New Horizons, will be conferred on promising young physicists. The other prize is meant for scientists in specialized branches, and can be awarded at all times, for instance, after the publication of data on an experiment, whose results will be immediately acknowledged by colleagues as sensational or simply of paramount importance.
The first laureates are nine scientists from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and the California Institute of Technology: Nima Arkani-Hamed (Iranian), Juan Maldacena (Argentinian), Nathan Seiberg (Israeli), Edward Witten and Alan Guth (both from the USA), Ashoke Sen (from India), and Maxim Kontsevich, Andrei Linde, and Alexei Kitaev (Russian). Interestingly, two of them, Witten and Kontsevich, are mathematicians, and not physicists. The former is doing research into the mathematics apparatus of string theory and quantum field theory. The latter is a laureate of numerous awards, including “the math Nobel,” Fields Medal. Alongside with works on the mathematics apparatus of string theory, he is famous for the development of homological mirror symmetry and the study of wall-crossing phenomena.
Each of the laureates received three million dollars, and is entitled to the right of choosing next year’s winners. The openness of the Selection Committee is yet another aspect that makes the Fundamental Physics Prize different from the Nobel Prize. Moreover, anyone can offer their candidates, also via the Internet.
The adjudication and Selection Committee’s work are based on different principles than those of the Nobel Prize Committee. The Nobel Prize is often awarded for important, but narrow themes and achievements, rather than revolutionary discoveries. Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize not for his special and general relativity theory, but for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect – a very important, yet much narrower theory.
Also, the Nobel Prize is based on the principle of the scientific discoveries’ practical value. According to Alfred Nobel’s will, his fortune should be used to create a series of annually awarded prizes for those who confer the “greatest benefit on mankind” over a year. It was no coincidence that he did not start an award in mathematics which, in his view, was a theoretical science. Theoretical physics also belonged in the same category, since it is often impossible to provide experimental proof for its postulates for quite a long time.
In this aspect Milner’s prize is very important and timely. Yet it also raises certain questions. As professor Diakonov of Saint Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences remarked, “Nobel Prizes are conferred for undisputable achievements, while this one appears to be partly awarded for unproven fantasies. It should be borne in mind that string theory is supported by a certain part of physicists, while four of Milner Prize laureates are engaged in the developing of this particular theory.
Another peculiar feature of the new prize is that all prize recipients are invited to present public talks, at least once a year, targeted at a general audience, on subjects ranging from the basics of modern physics to cutting-edge research. Milner, who got his degree in theoretical physics from the Moscow State University in 1985, believes the popularization of science to be an important matter, both for educational and practical reasons.
He substantiates his views by the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, made at the particle accelerator of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), built with approximately 10 billion dollars invested by a number of countries. “When we have to build another accelerator, probably several times more expensive, we will not be able to do without broad international cooperation and without public awareness of the reasons why it is necessary.”
We would like to emphasize the educational value of public talks by major scientists. As an example, we could adduce the lectures by the famous American physicist Richard Feynman, translated into many languages. Besides, Feynman also decoded the so-called Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving Mayan books.
The language of sciences (natural sciences first of all) is extremely complicated for laymen, which hinders the spread of scientific knowledge. The resulting vacuum is filled with pseudo-science and obscurantism. The latter is politically promoted by certain clerical circles, notably in Russia, which prefer to keep the masses in ignorance. Suffice it to recollect the crusade against Darwin’s theory of evolution. Physics and mathematics are not so easy to discard, so they will resort to Providence in multiple dimensions and other pseudo-scientific nonsense, obscuring people’s minds. This is not a scholarly discussion, but sheer politics. Thus Milner’s initiative, aimed at the propagation of theoretical physics and other areas of science, should be only welcomed.
The newly-founded prize suggests some somber thoughts. They have to do with the stand our oligarchs take, rather than prizes or science as such. This was aptly observed by Yulia Latynina in Kod dostupa (Access Code), a program on Echo of Moscow: “When I see some buying Chelsea, Arsenal, or Gazprom negotiating to become the major sponsor for UEFA, I take it as a message to society: UEFA is cool, soccer is cool, while physics, science in general is nothing.” What do our rich fellow citizens spend money on, with rare exceptions?
It is not even a matter of luxury cars and property in Europe, bought at exorbitant prices. As an oligarch purchases a soccer club (or any other), he does something more than merely promotes his own good self. He invests in a commercial project. Sport involves big money. Virtually none of our moneybags is perturbed by an idea of donating to science as a most important constituent of the nation’s future.
Little wonder, actually. Oligarchs are hardly different from our domestic politicians, many of whom simply bought their university degrees – yet not only did they fail to master elementary spelling or pronunciation rules, but will also boast of this. They suggest well-known literary characters, flaunting their ignorance and primitive thinking.
Meanwhile, true Ukrainian elites from the Middle Ages on, always recognized the importance of education and enlightenment. Our country has always boasted generous patrons, who donated enormous sums to universities, laboratories, supporting scholars, inventors, and engineers. Men like Tereshchenko, Brodsky, and others had a broad outlook and realized the importance of all these matters. But where are such men today?
The future of Milner’s newly-founded prize is not quite clear yet. However, it is an example worth following.
COMMENTARY
Maksym STRIKHA, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics:
“The future of the Milner Prize is indeed not quite clear at the moment. The Nobel Prize owes its authority not due to its financial dimension (it became really significant only some three decades ago), but because in its history there are no laureates, awarded for unsubstantiated or erroneous work.
“Indeed, many worthy physicists, chemists, or biologists were awarded decades after the appearance of their fundamental works (here the Nobel Prize Committee immediately went against Nobel’s will, instructing to use the prize specifically for the ‘most significant achievements of the previous year,’ and was wise in doing so, since it is impossible to assess the value of some works over such a short period). Many died before they won the prize (which is not awarded posthumously). Some did not get it due to an unfortunate coincidence. Our fellow countryman Ivan Puliui had every reason to share the first Nobel Prize in physics (in 1901) with Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen – but his extensive article with a detailed description of his discovery of X-rays was published several months later than the German physicist’s short announcement. Another, Mykola Boholiubov, made a huge contribution into creating superconductivity theory, but in 1972 the prize for it was awarded to three Americans, John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer. The contribution of the Soviet physicist Leonid Mandelshtam into the discovery of combination diffraction is no less than that made by Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, an Indian physicist who became a Nobel laureate in 1930.
“These facts pertain to the area of physics, where I am knowledgeable, yet there have been similar stories with the prizes for chemistry, physiology, or medicine. So sometimes the prize was not given to those who deserved it. Yet it has never been undeservedly awarded.”
“From this viewpoint, the conferment of the first “Milner Prizes” could indeed cast a shadow of doubt: there is no way to predict the place of its laureates’ works in the history of science 20, 30, 50, or 100 years later.
“However, the very fact of starting such a prize should definitely be welcomed. It should be also welcomed because Ukrainian theoretical physicists are quite competitive (luckily, they do not need super-expensive equipment, the lack of which so painfully debilitates their colleagues in experimental physics). Generally speaking, their claim for the newly-founded prize would stand much better chances than for the Nobel Prize – of course, if Ukrainian science is not liquidated in the near future by the occupation regime, which seems to have no more respect for science as it has for the Ukrainian language. Should this happen, the Milner prize could only be claimed by “scholars of Ukrainian background,” who are the pride of many top universities and laboratories across the world today, since at home there was no demand for their talent and knowledge.”
