Facebook, Alibaba award $15m to math masters

Breakthrough Prize, which is funded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Alibaba's Jack Ma as well as other leading businesspeople, honored its first winners with awards worth $15 million for mathematics on Tuesday.

The first math award, worth $3 million to each recipient, was presented to Simon Donaldson, Maxim Kontsevich, Jacob Lurie, Terence Tao and Richard Taylor for their breakthrough work on the subject.

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The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and Life Sciences was founded in 2013 by Google's Sergey Brin & Anne Wojcicki, Alibaba's Jack Ma & Cathy Zhang, DST Global's Yuri & Julia Milner, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan. The awards aim to celebrate scientists and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career.

Ma and his wife Cathy Zhang donate $3 million every year to the Breakthough Prize foundation.

After making a tremendous business achievement, Ma has made lots of efforts in philanthropy. He invited Microsoft's Bill Gate to Beijing last week to discuss charity.

Both Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba Group, said in April that they will donate about 2 percent of Alibaba's equity to set up personal charitable trusts.

Since Alibaba Group is expected to launch one of the largest initial public offerings in the US, which could value the company at $150 billion, Ma and Tsai's trusts will be worth roughly $3 billion - by far the largest endowment of its kind in China.

According to a previous media release, Ma and Tsai's twin trusts will focus on improving China's environment, health care, education and culture.