NEW DELHI – Ashoke Sen, a theoretical physicist and string theorist at Allahabad’s Harish Chandra Research Institute, became a millionaire overnight. He is one of the nine winners of the first Yuri Milner Fundamental Physics Prize which at Rs 16.7 crore is the most rewarding academic prize in the world, reported IBN Live.
The prize, which is almost three times that of the Nobel Prize – which is frequently shared by two or three winners, has been introduced by Yuri Milner, a Russian student of physics who dropped out of graduate school in 1989 and later made billions as an investor in companies like Facebook.
The reward is aimed at recognizing contributions of younger researchers to fundamental physics. The nine winners of 2012 are expected to form the committee to decide on the awardees of next year.
Ashoke had received the Padma Shree in 2001 and the SS Bhatnagar Award in 1994. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1998, and to the Indian National Science Academy in 1995.
Further,Yuri Milner, 50, became an overnight sensation in California’s Silicon Valley. In the past three years, he has invested greatly in social-media companies including Twitter, Facebook and Spotify and today his various investment funds are worth approximately $12 billion, and his private worth is set at $1 billion.
He created the award out of a love of theoretical physics, which he studied at Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences during the 1980s and early 1990s. The early prizewinners were chosen by Milner himself.
Unlike other awards, such as the Nobel Prize, this award can be given to theorists whose ideas have not yet been supported by data. The objective is to reward innovative concepts that are driving theoretical thinking forward.
