Author｜Zhou Chaochen
Head Image｜Visual China
In the week of Tencent’s 22nd birthday, Ma Huateng’s circle of scientists’ friends grew bigger.
This Saturday (November 14) afternoon, Tencent’s 2020 “Science Exploration Award” will be held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, which is also the second session. The families of 50 award-winning young scientists walked on the red carpet, some with their wives and children, some with their old fathers, some with their old mothers, and some with the whole family. Of course, some came here alone. Among them is a scientist with his wife and daughter, and the wife is pregnant with one…
The award-winning scientist took his family along the red carpet at the awards ceremony of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Picture: Tiger Sniff
It is said that Tencent actively invited their families to witness this moment together. They said that whether it was awarding awards or walking on the red carpet, they all wanted to express the simple respect of scientists. At this moment, these 50 award-winning scientists are the absolute protagonists. We are familiar with such big names as Rao Yi, Qian Yingyi, Pan Jianwei, Wu Hequan, Cheng Taining and so on. This is similar to Jack Ma’s awarding of rural teachers—100 rural teachers and 20 rural principals are the protagonists each year, and entrepreneurs and celebrities are supporting roles—they have the same effect.
Rao Yi and others present awards to the award-winning scientists, picture: Tencent
The “Scientific Exploration Award” is 2018. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Tencent’s founding, the Chairman and CEO of Tencent and the founder of Tencent Foundation Ma Huateng joined forces with more than a dozen well-known people such as Rao Yi, Yang Zhenning, and Pan Jianwei A public welfare award jointly initiated by scientists and scholars. The award is aimed at basic science and cutting-edge technology fields, and supports young scientific and technological workers aged 45 and below who work full-time in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. The winners will each receive a total of 3 million yuan in prizes from the Tencent Foundation in the next 5 years, and they are free to spend.
The average age of this year’s award-winning scientists is less than 40 years old. There are 6 awardees 35 years old and below, and the youngest is only 30 years old. In addition, this year there are 3 scientists from Hong Kong, China, and the number of female winners has increased to 5.
Research shows that many scientists made their best scientific discoveries before the age of 40, which is also the last age of creativity and innovation. Perhaps this is the age limit set by the Tencent Scientific Exploration Award The reason for 45 years old.
According to Qian Yingyi, chairman of the Supervisory Committee of the “Scientific Exploration Award” and senior professor of liberal arts at Tsinghua University, more than 800 “academicians of the two academies” participated in the nomination, recommendation, and review process of this year’s awards. At this stage, 13 Nobel Prize, Turing Prize, Fields Medal winners, and more than 100 academicians from developed countries participated, and it took 3 months.
Science is beautiful, but the process is desperate and painful
A group photo of 50 award-winning scientists, photo: Tencent
Ma Huateng, who has not shown up for a long time, is said to have been recovering from old waist injuries in Hong Kong, but he still sent a few minutes of voice, saying: “Today, I am your “fan”. I sincerely admire you, here You can achieve such outstanding results at an early age. You are all in the most creative stage of life, and you are in an era when you need innovation the most. I hope that among you, future scientists can be born.”
Last Saturday, he forwarded the live broadcast of the Tencent WE Conference in Moments. He must squat every year.
He said that innovation is not just a matter for scientists. Only when the soil for innovation is thicker, the atmosphere is stronger, and the mechanism is sounder, innovation will come naturally. “Human society must respond to various survival and development challenges, and must seek answers from science and technology. , We need methods, and talents are the foundation of science and technology. We need to be more active in discovering talents, caring for talents, supporting them to explore freely and enjoy them, so that our science and technology can become more self-reliant.”
He said that Tencent will maintain its long-term investment in the “Science Exploration Award” to help the long-term development of national basic research. “We also hope to work with more people to make science become fashion and innovation to become the pursuit of the younger generation.”
Prof. Honjo Tasuku, the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine, emphasized in a video recorded: “Scientific research is extremely important for us to overcome the series of challenges we are facing. But when we look around, You will find that support for science, especially support for young scientists, is still unsatisfactory. Therefore, encouraging early scientific research for young scientists is particularly important.”
“This award gives young people who are doing basic scientific research confidence. Our country is now facing various problems such as neck and head stuck, and now there are more and more problems. It turns out that these problems are not related to engineering. Many of the problems in the basic sciences have not been solved at the basic level, and many basic problems have not been understood.” Professor and Dean of the School of Life Science and Technology of Harbin Institute of Technology, and doctoral supervisor of the School of Biomedical Engineering Huang Zhiwei is this year’s award. One of them, he said in an interview with the media, “doing this kind of very