Thursday, June 14, 2012: All those who were getting restless to know about the winner of the prestigious biennial award, 2012 Millennium Technology Prize, the wait is over! We yesterday reported about the two finalists, Linus Torvalds, the Linux Kernel creator, and Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese physician and stem cell researcher. As soon as the news was published, comments started pouring in and many felt that they both equally deserved the award. Well, your prayers have been heard. Linus Torvalds shares the Millennium Technology Prize with the stem cell scientist. They both will be getting an equal cut of the €1.2 million prize fund.
The President of the Republic of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, presented the prize today during the ceremony at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in front of an audience of scientists and business leaders. This is the first time that the Grand Prize has been shared by two scientists.

Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American citizen born in Finland, has been awarded the prize for creating the Linux kernel, a new open source operating system for computers. 73,000 man years have been spent fine-tuning the code. On the other hand, Dr Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese citizen, has been awarded the prize in recognition of his discovery of a new method to develop induced pluripotent stem cells for medical research. Using his method to create stem cells, scientists all over the world are making great strides in research in medical drug testing and biotechnology.

The prize is often referred to as the Tech Nobel.