Forbes reports that the Breakthrough Prize for Mathematics recently announced its first winners. Mathematics, though a fundamental bedrock of science, is often ignored by many including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (who administer the Nobel prize).
The Breakthrough Prizes are given for 3 fields – fundamental physics, life sciences and now maths. It was started by a group of people including Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin, Anna Wojcicki, Jack Ma, Cathy Zang,and Yuri and Julia Milner. The prize for maths was founded by Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner. The prize has awarded $3million each to 5 mathematicians. This puts it at 2.5 times the amount given by to Nobel prize winners, and it is providing competition, if not taking over from the $15,000 Fields medal as the disciplines top honour. As per Forbes:
“The five winners of this year’s are: Simon Donaldson of Stony Brook University in New York and Imperial College London; Maxim Kontsevichfrom the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France; Jacob Lurie of Harvard; Terence Tao at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Richard Taylor, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.”
Much of basic research, and any research which contributes to building a ‘public good’ (i.e., provides wide benefits available for the public, but is difficult to privately appropriate for individual gains, such as through patents) finds it very difficult to find any sponsors outside of public funded money. The risks are too high and the gains are either not tangible or are not easily appropriated. And it seems with the increased spotlight being given to corporations who use this basic research to build finished products and bring them into the market, government grants are not being appreciated as much as they should – leading to a dangerous situation of money being redirected away from this purpose. [See this NYT article on Mariana Mazzucato’s arguments on this] Seeing how basic research is vital for innovation and progress, it’s terrific to see it being encouraged this way, especially in a field like maths, which is often hard pressed to find positive (or just any) interactions with the public at large. And just to add a slight Indian flavour to this – National Mathematics day is on the December 22nd (Srinivas Ramanujan’s birthday), and a quick google search shows me that The Hindu has even carried an article on career prospects for mathematicians!
