Physics Awards

Yuri Milner made bucket loads of cash investing in tech start-ups so he decided to take a paultry $27M and give it to physicists that are doing interesting work. They each got about $3M (three times the Noble Prize), $100,000 of which they give to a junior researcher. What's more, the award was a complete surprise to the recipients. They didn't have any idea they were in the running.

I like this so incredibly much. Elon Musk uses his money to build space ships. Yuri Milner uses his money to build scientists that build space ships. I like Yuri's approach better.