Physicist Alan Guth wins major $3 million science award

This week, Russian tech investor Yuri Milner awarded nine physicists $3 million — each. The Fundamental Physics Prize is brand new and recognizes “transformative advances in the field.”

We talk to one of the winners, Alan Guth, who is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about what it was like to win the big prize. “They just wired it into my account,” says Guth. “So one day I logged in and suddenly it was $3 million-plus.”

Despite winning large this time, Guth warns, “I certainly would not advise any young person to go into physics for the money.”