Lance Fortnow has a post summarizing some of the news affecting the CS community over the past month, including updates on various prizes as well as the significant media attention focusing on physics- and math-related topics such as movies about Turing and Hawking as well as Terrence Tao on the Colbert Report.
From his post, I just learned that former Microsoft chief executive Steven Ballmer is making a donation to Harvard that will endow twelve—that’s right, 12—new tenured and tenure-track faculty positions in computer science. This is fantastic news and will have a huge positive impact on Harvard CS.
One thing missing from Lance’s list was news about the Breakthrough Prizes in mathematics and fundamental physics. In case you’ve been living under a rock, these prizes give a very hefty US $3 million purse to the chosen recipients. The winners are all luminaries in their field, and it’s great to see them get recognition for their outstanding work.
On the other hand, juxtaposing Ballmer’s donation and the Breakthrough Prizes couldn’t offer a starker contrast. It costs the same amount—$3 million—to endow a university full professor with appointments in more than one discipline at Duke University. My initial googling would suggest that this is a pretty typical figure at top-tier institutions.
What if, instead of a offering a cash prize to the Breakthrough Prize winners, the reward was an upgrade to an endowed chair at the current institution subject to the condition that the existing position would go to a new tenured or tenure-track hire in the same field? This seems to be a much better investment in science overall because it will help build a community of researchers around the prize winner, and the marginal benefit to this community from associating with the prize winner is likely far greater than any extra incentive the researchers might get within the current system to simply strive to win $3M cash.
