Big prize, Big Data: Shaw Prize for a statistician

摘要

A major academic prize has gone to a statistician. The Shaw Prize is known as the Nobel Prize of Asia. Almost as prestigious as the Nobels, it was founded by Hong Kong film mogul and philanthropist Run Run Shaw in 2003. Founding prestigious prizes is evidently good for the health: Shaw is currently 105 years old and retired last year. His view was that the Far East is underrepresented in the donation of major scientific awards. His prizes, in the fields of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematics, are open to everyone. The medals bear a quotation from the philosopher Xun Zi which translates as "Grasp the law of nature and make use of it". The prize offers a $1 million award to each of the winners. This year the mathematics prize winner is David Donoho, a professor of statistics at Stanford University.