University of Washington physicist David Hertzog can’t wait to find out how hundreds of researchers who worked on a geeky project known as the Muon g-2 Collaboration will react when they hear they’ve each won thousands of dollars for that work.
The money is coming from this year’s $3 million Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics, which was awarded tonight during a gala ceremony in Los Angeles. Hertzog and his colleagues decided that the prize should be divided equally among everyone who was an author on research papers relating to the decades-long series of muon experiments.
“There are students who were in and out of this thing — two years or less,” he said. “They’re going to be shocked out of their lives about something they did a long time ago that they don’t remember doing. They’re going to get a phone call or email from the Breakthrough people, and they’re going to go, ‘What!?’ That’s kind of fun.”
