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Comment by leftcenterright | Hacker News Reader

So, no wealthy person is buying a physics lecture or investing in experiments to better understand the nature of this universe we live in? /s

btw does anyone know if places like Fermi lab, CERN receive donations from the super-wealthy?

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Government labs, not so much. But universities and independent research institutions, sure. For example, the Perimeter Institute is considered to be one of the top theoretical physics institutions in the world, and it exists because Mike Lazaridis made a ton of money from Research in Motion (aka BlackBerry) and decided that Canada needed a top tier theoretical physics institute.

Mike Lazaridis, and other high-level execs of Research In Motion (Blackberry), donated money (>$100M) for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter_Institute_for_Theore..., in Waterloo, Ontario.

Generally its universities that are getting the money directly. Its mostly for big ticket items, especially buildings, and especially where they can attach their name to it. Like at Stanford its the "Gates Computer Science" building.

Other than that there are foundations that issue grants to individual researchers, e.g. Gates also has a foundation. There are others such as Burroughs-Wellcome, Clayton Foundation, etc.

The private foundations are generally very stingy with "Facilities and Administration" fees, which was in the news recently as the fight over NIH/NSF funding which can go in the 50-60% range. Private generally doesn't go over 15%, frequently its much less.

I was part of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN. We had an annual collaboration meeting in Copenhagen, perhaps in 2012 or so. Poul Allen’s yacht was moored in the harbor, across from the venue. It as the high point of CERN hype, and we knew that he was a patron of the sciences. So a delegation (our spokesperson etc.) was sent with some ATLAS merchandise to greet him, and perhaps suggest a sponsorship of some student activities. Allen was a uniquely generous person when it came to science, but historically, science is a gentleman activity for men og free time, so it surely happens.

Personally, the freedom to pursue my scientific curiosity is the only motivation to seek wealth. If I by virtue of satisfying wealthy people’s interests in fundamental physics could sustain my life and research, I wouldn’t care about accumulating wealth for myself.

I don't think directly, but wealthy people occasionally "buy a building" at a university, or fund an endowed professorship.

Jim Simons did in fact fund Brookhaven national lab directly at one point. His foundations and friends continue to fund a variety of scientific endeavors. But we don't have too many scholar-turned-philanthropists around, unfortunately.

Occasionally? It's very common. I guess for an individual wealthy person it might be occasional or a one-time thing.

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