TEXTO:
Yuri Milner, Russian billionaire
Rewarding blue-sky thinkers with $3 million each.
Three weeks ago the lives of nine physicists across
the world were transformed when they were phoned by a
mysterious Russian. The Russian, whom most had never
met or heard of, told each scientist he was awarding
5 him $3 million. The money is part of the new Fundamental
Physics Prize, announced publicly July 31. Awarding a
total of $27 million, it is the largest science prize in
history, dwarfing the Nobel Prize.
The mysterious Russian behind the money is
10 50-year-old Yuri Milner. In 2009 Milner came out of
nowhere to become the biggest single investor in
Facebook, a move many thought was madness but that
helped make him a billionaire. He is the originator of a
method of investment into IT companies that was called
15 unworkable — but has become a new paradigm. At
conferences, Milner seems a little bored when asked to
discuss everyday business. Instead he comes alive when
talking about how the Internet is creating a global brain
that connects machines and men into one interlinked
20 intelligence.
Milner originally studied theoretical physics,
working on his Ph.D. in the same department as Nobel
Prize winner and dissident Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov
inspired Milner by constantly asking, “Where will science
25 be in 10 years’ time?” Predicting the future has always
been Milner’s obsession. Today his Moscow penthouse
feels like a spaceship: monitors and screens are
everywhere.
Milner dropped out of the Ph.D. program in the late
30 1980s when he realized he wasn’t made of Nobel stuff.
He was already honing his business skills, selling
beat-up Western computers on the gray market of
perestroika Moscow. He studied at the University of
Pennsylvania. When he returned to Russia, oil and gas
35 were all the rage. But Milner was already convinced the
Internet would change the world. He invested in Russian
IT in the early 2000s, when it was deeply unprofitable. In
2009 he used every connection he had to arrange a
meeting with Mark Zuckerberg. When they met, Milner
40 didn’t talk money — just about the digital future. They
clicked, and Zuckerberg let Milner invest in Facebook.
Since then, Milner’s invested in Twitter, Groupon, and
Zynga. He never asks for a seat on board. He doesn’t
spread his bets. He just wants to spot the next visionary
45 and invest big.
The difference between the Nobel Prize and the
Fundamental Physics Prize is that Milner doesn’t require
evidential proof for an idea, a process that takes decades.
It’s aimed at young scientists, the blue-sky thinkers
50 researching the likes of quantum fluctuations and string
theory- those who push the frontiers of knowledge and
change paradigms. That seems to be the space where
Milner feels at home.
POMERANTSEV, Peter. Yuri Milner, Russian billionaire. Newsweek. Aug. 13, 2012 p.8.
Yuri Milner’s prize is intended for
