In the realm of pure extraordinary zero to hero business success, there really don't come much bigger than Mark Zuckerberg. The Harvard dropout who founded Facebook has spawned not just a global internet phenomenon, but a shed load of business books, an Oscar-winning movie and more column inches than you can shake a stick at. He's also aged just 28, one of the world's richest men. And now he's decided to part with a tiny fraction of his billions to help create the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science, rewarding research into curing diseases and extending human life. Along with Sergey Brin of Google, and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, he's funding no fewer than 11 prizes this year worth $3 million each - that's three times bigger than a Nobel Prize equivalent. The event gave the BBC's David Willis a rare opportunity to ask some questions on behalf of Business Daily to catch up with Silicon Valley's hottest uber geek.
First, he asked him, "What was the motivation for the prize?"
"The biggest thing for me in thinking through this is that I just think that there should be more people and society who go into solving these problems. And I think one of the ways to do this is that society needs more heroes who are these scientists and researchers and engineers working on this kind of problems. So what we can do is, you know, these people are actually doing the amazing work themselves, but what we can do is create this institution, this prize, and that can celebrate and reward the work that these folks are doing, and to hopefully encourage more of the next generation of people to go into what we think is such important work."
