Cambridge don Michael Green shares $3m for Fundamental Physics prize

• Hawking's successor gets honour for string theory work• New award one of several funded by tech billionairesThe man who took on Stephen Hawking's prestigious post at Cambridge University has won $1.5m (£918,000) for pioneering work on string theory, an idea that describes the world as tiny strings in eleven-dimensional space-time.Michael Green, who became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge when Hawking stepped down in 2009, shares the $3m Fundamental Physics prize with fellow theorist John Schwarz at California Institute of Technology.The award, worth more than double the $1.2m Nobel prize, was set up last year by Yuri Milner, a Russian investor and self-described "failed physicist" who made a billion from investments in Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies.The prize winners were announced on Thursday night at a glitzy ceremony hosted by Kevin Spacey in Hangar One, an enormous former airship station managed by Nasa in Silicon Valley. It is the second of Milner's prizes to reward the Cambridge lab: Hawking won $3m last year for a lifetime of achievements.The prize is one of a string of annual awards set up by Milner and other Silicon Valley stars to raise the profile of scientists and put them on a par – in some sense, at least – with film and sports celebrities. Earlier this year, Milner joined forces with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, to launch the $3m Breakthrough prize in life sciences. At...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: The Guardian People in science News Nobel prizes Science prizes Physics Michael Green Source Type: news