How Yuri Milner Supports the Space Science Industry Through Philanthropic Giving

"Yuri Milner is something of a visionary. He sees that while there are many good causes and pressing problems, ultimately our chances of thriving as a species depend on tending and feeding the precious flame of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking, TIME Magazine 2016

One of the 236 signatories of Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates' Giving Pledge, Yuri Milner has committed an unprecedented amount to science over the last decade. The billionaire entrepreneur and founder of DST Global, one of the world's leading internet investment firms, began his career as a theoretical physicist, and, since then, his passion for science has fueled philanthropic projects like the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, and the Breakthrough Initiatives.

Respectively, these multi-million-dollar programs reward the work of top scientists, inspire students to think creatively about science and advance the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Yuri Milner's enthusiasm for progressing our global scientific community goes hand in hand with his desire to promote scientific and cultural progress, which he believes will ultimately expand our knowledge of the universe.

Here's how Yuri Milner supports groundbreaking scientific discoveries, funds progressions relating to SETI, and inspires young minds around the world.

Yuri Milner and the Giving Pledge

In 2012, Yuri Milner and his wife Julia joined the Giving Pledge, a movement that invites billionaires to commit half their wealth to philanthropic enterprises. Individuals like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Michael Bloomberg have joined this movement. In adding their names, the Milners committed more than half of their lifetime wealth to primarily scientific causes.

In his pledge letter, Yuri Milner describes his primary motivation for joining the Giving Pledge: to invest in leading minds and humanity's shared future. He draws parallels between the financial support that Albert Einstein received from relatives to complete his last few years of schooling and the immense value that comes from funding great minds and providing capital for scientific brilliance.

Yuri Milner acknowledges that, while we don't know where new ideas will take us, to find out we must invest in them today. Gaining a better understanding of the universe also leads to technological developments, so the pursuit of knowledge can benefit everyone. Yuri Milner writes, "simply by fulfilling our human urge to know, these discoveries enrich us all."

The Breakthrough Prize

Discovery is the motivation behind the Breakthrough Prize, the world's largest scientific award, which the Milners established with Sergei Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Priscilla Chan, and Mark Zuckerberg in 2012. The awards honor recent achievements in fundamental physics, a field that helps humanity understand the deep structure of the universe, as well as mathematics and the life sciences.

Every year, five scientists each receive $3 million prizes at a live, televised gala award ceremony in Silicon Valley. There are additional prizes worth $100,000 and $50,000 for early-career physicists and mathematicians and female mathematicians who have recently completed their PhDs. In total, the Breakthrough Prize has awarded $292.25 million to deserving winners since its inception.

Yuri Milner believes that cultural capital comes with financial capital. After all, why shouldn't we celebrate scientific influencers as we do other cultural influencers, such as artists, entertainers, and entrepreneurs? His vision is of a world where the best minds in science and mathematics receive a raised profile, financial compensation, and prestige, in turn influencing their peers and inspiring the next generation of top thinkers to stand on their shoulders.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge

Yuri Milner's philanthropic support extends directly to the younger generation through a video competition called the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. This contest is open to high school students worldwide and invites young people to take a big idea in physics, life science, or mathematics and explain it in a 90-second video. Entrants must be aged 13-18, and judging criteria include the entrant's creativity, level of engagement, the difficulty of the topic tackled, and the video's illumination of that subject. Previous entries have covered topics from the covid-19 virus. to quantum tunneling and time dilation.

The foundation that funds the Breakthrough Prizes also supports the Breakthrough Junior Challenge and makes life-changing contributions to the student who creates the winning video. The annual winner receives a $250,000 scholarship toward post-secondary education, a new $100,000 Breakthrough Science Lab for their school, and $50,000 for a teacher who has inspired them.

The Breakthrough Initiatives

While the Breakthrough Prizes and Breakthrough Junior Challenge both brilliant scientists and promising students, the Breakthrough Initiatives are space science research programs dedicated to the search for life beyond Earth. Are we alone in the universe? This is the fundamental question that the Breakthrough Initiatives are trying to answer.

Breakthrough Listen

Yuri Milner launched the first of these initiatives, Breakthrough Listen, with Stephen Hawking in 2015. Listen is a $100 million project that has breathed life into the field of SETI. So far, among its many achievements, Listen has published a pioneering search for alien signals (or technosignatures), released a data survey of our galaxy's center and Earth Transit Zone, and produced an innovative list of almost every kind of object phenomenon that we can observe in the known universe.  It has also made astronomical discoveries, such as new Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), and performed radio observations of 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object seen passing through the solar system.

Breakthrough Starshot

In 2016 Yuri Milner, in collaboration with Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri Milner, and Stephen Hawking, launched Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million research and engineering project that seeks to develop ultra-fast, light-driven miniature space probes, or "nanocrafts," for interstellar travel. Starshot has its sights set on our closest star system, Alpha Centauri, as its first destination. The open access initiative invites ideas on its engineering challenges from members of the public and experts alike.

Breakthrough Watch, Message, and Discuss

Other Breakthrough Initiatives include Watch, a multi-million dollar search for evidence of primitive cellular life on nearby exoplanets, which in 2021 observed a candidate planet in the Alpha Centauri system; as well as Message, an international competition to create messages from humanity to advanced alien civilizations, and Discuss, an annual academic conference that sparks conversations about life in the universe and space exploration.

Supporting Israeli Students

As Israeli citizens, Julia and Yuri Milner have also funded several programs through their foundation. These programs champion science, medicine, and technological innovation in Israel, especially among Israeli students.

Friends of Israel MBA Fellowship

In September 2020, the Foundation announced the Friends of Israel MBA Fellowship at Yuri Milner's alma mater, the Wharton School of Business, Pennsylvania. The $10 million fund offers full tuition for a two-year MBA program at Wharton to more than 60 students over 10 years. The fellowship enables outstanding Israeli students to experience one of the world's most prestigious business courses and, in turn, ensure their home country of Israel benefits from their newfound entrepreneurial skills and networks.

70 at 70 Fellowship

In 2018, the Milners' foundation funded the 70 at 70 list, recognizing 70 leading Israeli scientists and scholars in a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel.

Later that year, the foundation established the 70 at 70 Fellowship, a $7 million program supporting postgraduate students at 3 Israeli universities: the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and the Technion. The program has awarded $25,000 a year for 4 years to 70 outstanding science Ph.D. candidates.

Advancing Humanity's Shared Mission

In his short book, Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner outlines what he sees as humanity's mission to explore and understand our universe. To advance this mission, he suggests investing resources into fundamental science and space exploration and celebrating scientists as heroes, thus sparking a "new enlightenment" in which everyone can contribute to a shared culture of knowledge. Judging by Yuri Milner's extensive philanthropic work, it's clear the man Stephen Hawking once called "something of a visionary" is leading by example.

About Yuri Milner

Yuri Milner is an Israeli entrepreneur who invests in the fields of technology and science. After discovering a lifelong love for science and space exploration as a child, he followed his passion for theoretical physics and went on to work as a doctoral student investigating fundamental particle interactions.

Deciding to break into the world of entrepreneurship, Yuri Milner moved to the U.S. to study business at Wharton School. Since the late nineties, he has been investing in technology companies around the world and is the founder of DST Global, a leading investment firm with a portfolio that includes internet giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Spotify, Alibaba, and more.

Yuri Milner's passion for science has led him to pursue major philanthropic enterprises that advance discoveries in the scientific field, such as the Breakthrough Prize, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, and the Breakthrough Initiatives.

In 2012, Yuri Milner published some of his philosophical ideas about cosmology in Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilization. This short book contains his perspective on humanity's place in the universe, the mission our existence inspires, and the future that awaits us should we embrace this mission.