I imagine it’s a pretty amazing feeling to win a Nobel prize. But then where do you go from there? Well, if you’re Johns Hopkins physicist Adam Riess, Baltimore Fishbowl’s official physics crush, you just keep raking in the awards.
Riess won the Nobel in 2011 for his work on dark energy and the expanding universe. Yesterday, he was announced as part of the team that won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics–which happens to come with a $3 million award, making it the most lucrative academic prize in the world. (It’s funded by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin, and some other uber-wealthy internet entrepreneurs.)
The prize was given in recognition of research showing that the universe is expanding more quickly, rather than slowing down. Alas, Riess will have to share that cool $3 million with his two other collaborators and their research teams. In fact, each of the 50 physicists who contributed to the research will get a cut of the prize. Riess himself will walk away with $250,000, the Hopkins Hub reports.
While winning the Nobel prize meant that Riess got to hang out with His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, the Breakthrough Prize ceremony was attended by Seth McFarlane, Cameron Diaz, Jonn Hamm, Christina Aguilera, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The award ceremony will be aired on the Discovery Channel this Saturday.
