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When wealthy individuals decide to give away their fortunes, they face a choice: where can their resources make the greatest impact? For Giving Pledge signatory Yuri Milner, the answer was clear from the start. Science.
That decision wasn’t arbitrary. It grew from personal experience, intellectual conviction, and a belief that scientific progress underpins nearly every improvement in human welfare.
A Physicist’s Perspective
Yuri Milner spent a decade as a theoretical physicist before transitioning to business. Working in quantum field theory gave him firsthand exposure to the challenges and rewards of fundamental research. It also gave him an appreciation for what scientific breakthroughs require: time, resources, and freedom to pursue questions without guaranteed outcomes.
“My dream growing up was to emulate scientists like Galileo, Curie…,” Milner writes in his Eureka Manifesto. Though he ultimately concluded he lacked the talent for breakthrough discoveries himself, that early immersion shaped how he would later deploy his wealth.
When Yuri Milner made his fortune through DST Global, investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify, he didn’t forget where his intellectual passions lay. Science had captivated him as a young man. Philanthropy offered a way to support it as a successful investor.
The Case for Fundamental Research
Yuri Milner’s giving reflects a specific philosophy: that fundamental research deserves priority. In the Eureka Manifesto, he argues for “investing resources into fundamental science and space exploration” and making “funding commensurate with the true importance of science to our lives and our futures.”
This shows in his initiatives. The Breakthrough Prize honors researchers in life sciences, physics, and mathematics. The Breakthrough Initiatives fund programs searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and developing interstellar travel technology. These aren’t applied research projects with obvious commercial applications. They’re investigations into fundamental questions about life, the universe, and humanity’s place within it.
The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, for example, honored researchers whose work led to GLP-1 medications for diabetes and obesity. That discovery began as basic science and evolved into treatments helping millions of patients worldwide.
Inspiring the Next Generation
Yuri Milner’s philanthropy also targets the pipeline of future scientists. The Breakthrough Junior Challenge invites teenagers to create videos explaining complex scientific concepts, with substantial prizes for winners, their schools, and their teachers.
The logic is straightforward: today’s curious teenagers become tomorrow’s researchers. By making science engaging and rewarding scientific communication, Yuri Milner aims to cultivate talent that will drive discoveries for decades to come.
For a former physicist who found his greatest impact outside the lab, funding science has become a way to stay connected to the enterprise that first sparked his curiosity.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
