These days Fred Kavli, the founder of Kavlico Corporation, is returning to his original home, Norway, with an enviable task given to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences: Select a semi-annual prizewinner in each of the following three categories: Astrophysics, Neuroscience, and Nanoscience.
The recipients will get a diploma, a medal, and 1 million US dollars.
If this reminds you about the Nobel Prizes, that – according to Kavli – is not a coincidence. “The Nobel Institute is doing a great job in communicating science”, Kavli states, but with the challenges the world is facing “we need even more enthusiasm and interest.”
Kavli is putting his money (aquired from running and then selling his beloved Kavlico) where his mouth is through his Kavli Foundation. And it’s not the fist time he funds basic science. Last spring he funded research institutes at the prestigious Universities at Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Caltech, Chicago, Stanford, and Delft (NL) amongst others.
Answering the self-evident question of “Why?” he is doing all this funding, Kavli states: “To me this is a strong commitment, and most of what I own will be used to fund basic science in these three fields. You never know where science will take you, but I do know that the rewards will come and that the future will be more spectacular than we can imagine!”