Yuri Milner, the Russian entrepreneur and investor, attracted some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names to join him in starting a life sciences prize this year.
Now, he has wooed a titan from China: Jack Ma.
Mr. Ma, the executive chairman of the Internet giant Alibaba, and his wife, Cathy Zhang, have agreed to become sponsors of the prize, which is the world’s richest for medicine and biology, the group is expected to announce on Friday. Mr. Ma is also joining the board of the foundation that administers the prize, called the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Flush with Internet money, the foundation offers $3 million awards to scientists, more than twice as much as the Nobel Prize. Mr. Ma’s contribution brings the number of annual prizes to six from five.
Mr. Milner, who studied physics before earning a fortune investing in companies like Facebook, said the addition of Mr. Ma underscored the global nature of the prize. Though most of the recipients this year were American, the prize is open to submissions from around the world.
“Scientists are not making anywhere near what they should be making given the significance of what they’re doing,” Mr. Milner said in an interview. “In the last 50 years, we have evolved from a world where Einstein was the biggest celebrity to a world where the most famous scientist is not in the top few hundred celebrities in the world.”
A celebrity in his own right, Mr. Ma is joining a group of prominent technology moguls at the foundation. In addition to Mr. Milner, the sponsors of the prize include Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google; Anne Wojcicki, a co-founder of the genetics company 23andMe who is Mr. Brin’s wife; Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook; and Priscilla Chan, Mr. Zuckerberg’s wife. Arthur D. Levinson, the chairman of Apple, is the foundation’s chairman.
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