来自俄罗斯的当代诺贝尔

    当俄罗斯投资人尤里•米尔纳决定从自己迅速增长的财富中拿出一部分资金，用于支持他最大的爱好——物理学时，他有许多选择。他可以资助一所大学，或者创办一个奖学基金。他可以效仿马克•扎克伯格的慈善模式，提供数百万美元有附加条件的挑战赠款。【扎克伯格向纽瓦克公立学校系统（the Newark Public School System）提供的1亿美元挑战赠款要求该学校系统在富裕捐助者的帮助下筹集到同样数额的资金，从而使这份赠款的经济价值翻倍】，但米尔纳却选择了一个新颖的方式：他推出了基础物理学奖（Fundamental Physics Prize），每年向获奖物理学家提供300万美元的奖励。

    这个奖项旨在提高公众对基础物理学的关注。其一，奖项的现金价值是著名的诺贝尔奖的两倍。虽然这个奖项每年只颁发给一名物理学家，但米尔纳以提名九位获奖者来拉开该奖项的序幕，这九名提名人选都是他亲自选定，共同分享总额为2,700万美元的奖金。这九名获奖者将组成一个委员会，负责在每年2、3月份的时候挑选一名年度获奖者。

    更引人注目的是，该奖项表彰的重点不是物理学家的成就，而是物理学家的远大志向——以及使物理学对主流受众产生吸引力的普遍努力。该网站表示，该奖项表彰“各种科学突破，以及把基本物理令人振奋的进展向公众传递的努力。”符合获奖条件的科学家并不是因为他们已经证明了以前未经证实的物理学理论，而是因为他们正设法实现这个目标。该奖项鼓励他们致力于那些答案可能无法在个人一生中成功获得的棘手问题。有时，他们的努力甚至可能会失败。每位获奖者只需在获奖当年的某个时候就其研究工作做个公众演讲即可。此外，该奖项还将向刚刚开始职业生涯的年轻物理学研究人员（研究生等等）提供一项数额较小的10万美元物理学年度新秀奖。它的目的是调整、扩大该领域本身，鼓励世界上一大批年轻知识精英避开华尔街或硅谷，转而专心投身学术界。

    这是一个典型的尤里•米尔纳举措。他语调柔和，曾经是物理学家，后来转型成为投资人。他擅长做出大胆而且需要大量现金、颠覆市场及思维模式的举措。2009年我们第一次见面时，他递给我一本有关新型投资模式的指南。就在那年，他的公司——数字天空技术公司（Digital Sky Technologies）向Facebook投入2亿美元，换得了2％的股份。（在随后的几年里，他把在Facebook的投资增加到最高时9.5％的股份，然后慢慢减持，在Facebook首次公开募股时抛售了持有的相当一部分股份。）他参与投资Facebook时达成的协议条款令硅谷许多最知名的交易撮合者都感到困惑不解：米尔纳在2009年向Facebook第一次投资时，把后者的估值定为100亿美元，这在2009年可是一个巨大的数字，而且他计划不插手Facebook的运营，既不要求获得该公司的一个董事会席位，也不要求获得该公司一股有投票权的股票。

    我在2010年对米尔纳进行人物专访时曾向扎克伯格询问有关米尔纳的事情，扎克伯格当时告诉我说：“我和一批不同的（风险投资）公司进行了接洽，我也和米尔纳相处了一些时间。然后我就想，这家伙显然更加聪明，更有洞察力，而且在我们所从事的业务方面具有更丰富的经验。”此后一年之内，随着米尔纳的投资策略使他叩开了美国许多最热门的互联网消费公司的投资大门，其他公司也开始纷纷效仿他的做法——以优厚的条件向有前途的初创公司投入大量现金。

    两年后，米尔纳做出了另一个具有颠覆性的举措。他与硅谷人脉最广的天使投资人罗恩•康威合作，向所有毕业于YCombinator这家“科技创业公司孵化机构中的哈佛大学（the Harvard University）”的创业者保证提供15万美元的资金。他的假设是，另一个值得信赖的机构已经选出了值得投资的创业者，而且承诺帮助他们。当然，这些投资当中有许多可能并不是非常辉煌的投资交易。但如果其中有一家初创公司成为突破性的明星，他就有望从中获益。通过签订书面正式协议，米尔纳基本上走在了硅谷所有投资者的前面，而那些投资者得在科技创业公司孵化机构YCombinator的创业演示日排队等候进场，在进行演示的初创公司中找到投资机会。

    因此，我本周采访他时，听到他对这项基础物理学奖的看法时并不感到意外：他希望这个奖项能产生异乎寻常的影响。在这个越来越关注短期商业利益的时代——各大公司期望更加迅速地把研究成果运用到新产品上，而各国政府向学术界仅是出于调查目的的研究项目所提供的资金越来越少。米尔纳希望吸引全球最富有经验的思想家，让他们把自己的职业生涯投入到努力推进我们对宇宙的认识中去。他希望更多聪明的人只是为了思考而致力于思考。

    但和所有奖项一样，随着时间的推移单靠该奖项的资金规模本身不足以给自身赋予权力和尊重。事实上，鉴于其重点放在向更多主流受众传输知识，要想提高这个奖项在科学界的声誉米尔纳需要加倍努力。（一些学术博客作者对此都持怀疑态度。）米尔纳已邀请1979年的诺贝尔物理学奖得主、理论物理学家史蒂文•温伯格出任该奖项的董事会成员。首批九名获奖者将担任遴选委员会成员，负责挑选2013年的获奖者；任何人都可以通过网络提名一位候选人。之前米尔纳赢得了硅谷怀疑者的信任和钦佩，很可能他也同样能够赢得学术界最负盛名的科学家的信任和钦佩。

    译者：iDo98

    When Russian Investor Yuri Milner decided to put some of his fast-growing fortune to work in support of his greatest passion, physics, he had any number of options. He could have funded a university or started a scholarship fund. He could have followed Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropic model by making a multi-million dollar challenge grant. (Zuckerberg's $100 million challenge grant to the Newark Public School System required the school system to match the money with help from wealthy donors, doubling the gift's economic value.) Instead, Milner chose a novel device: he launched the Fundamental Physics Prize, an annual $3 million award for physicists.

    The prize is designed to draw attention. For one, the cash value is twice that of the famed Nobel. And though it will be awarded to just one physicist annually, Milner kicked it off by naming nine winners, which he selected personally, for a total payout of $27 million. These recipients will form a committee to select an annual winner each February or March.

    Even more striking, the award doesn't recognize accomplishment, so much as aspiration -- and a general attempt to make physics sexy for a mainstream audience. The Web site says the prize recognizes "scientific breakthroughs, as well as communicating the excitement of fundamental physics to the public." Scientists become eligible not because they have proven the unproven, but because they are trying to do so. They're encouraged to devote their efforts to problems so intractable the solutions may not arrive in an individual lifetime. Sometimes, their efforts may even fail. Each winner is required simply to give a lecture on his or her work to the general public sometime during the year. A smaller award of $100,000 will also be given to young physicists -- grad students and the like -- just embarking on their careers. The point is to restructure and broaden the field itself, to encourage many of the world's youngest intellectual champions to eschew Wall Street or Silicon Valley in favor of academia.

    It's a classic Yuri Milner move. The soft-spoken physicist-turned-investor specializes in making bold, cash-heavy moves that disrupt markets and mindsets. When we first met back in 2009, he handed me a playbook for a new type of investment model. That was the year his firm Digital Sky Technologies dropped $200 million for a 2% stake in Facebook (FB). (In the years that followed, he increased that investment to a high of 9.5%, and then decreased it slowly, selling a significant number of his shares during the IPO.) The terms baffled many of Silicon Valley's most established dealmakers: Milner's original investment valued the company at $10 billion, a huge figure in 2009, and he planned to be hands off -- not taking a board seat nor requesting a voting share in the company.

    I asked Zuckerberg about Milner for a 2010 profile of the investor, and he told me "I talked to a bunch of different [venture] firms and I spent time with [Milner] and I was like, this guy is clearly smarter and more insightful and has more experience in what we are doing." Within a year, as Milner's investment strategy landed him in many of the hottest consumer Internet companies in the United States, other firms began replicating his practice of giving massive cash infusions with generous terms to promising startups.

    Two years later, Milner made another disruptive move. He partnered with one of Silicon Valley's most connected angel investors, Ron Conway, to guarantee all of the graduates of YCombinator -- the Harvard University of tech incubators -- $150,000 in funding. His assumption was that another trusted institution had already selected the entrepreneurs and committed to helping them. Sure, many of them probably weren't great deals. But if just one of them became a breakout star, he'd likely benefit. By penning a formal deal, Milner basically stepped in front of all the valley investors who line up at the incubator's demo days to search out investment opportunities.

    So it was hardly surprising to hear his take on the prize when I spoke to him this week: he is hoping for disproportionate impact. In a world ever more focused on short-term commercial gains—when large companies look to apply research more quickly to new products and governments have less funding to offer academics for the sake of inquiry alone. Milner wants to coax the globe's most sophisticated thinkers to spend their careers trying advance our knowledge of the universe. He wants more smart people to think simply for the sake of thinking.

    But as with all prizes, the size of the purse alone won't be enough to confer authority and respect over time. In fact, with its focus on preaching to a more mainstream audience, Milner will need to work harder to boost the award's reputation in scientific communities. (Some academic bloggers are skeptical.) Milner invited theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg, a 1979 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, to be on his board. The nine prize winners will serve on a selection committee to choose the 2013 winner; anyone can nominate a candidate online. Milner was able to win the trust and admiration of Silicon Valley's skeptics; it's likely he'll be able to do the same among academia's most prestigious scientists.