2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant is profiled in the latest Rolling Stone. The long piece talks about Brilliant’s amazing life, from the hippie days of the 1960s, to his time in India helping eradicate smallpox, to his current job as head of Google.org, charged with spending some of Google’s money to solve global health crises and promote alternative energy. A fun snip from the story:
… one afternoon in the fall of 2005, while Brilliant was golfing in San Francisco, his cellphone rang. It was Chris Anderson, curator of the TED Conference, an annual gathering of scientists, thinkers and Silicon Valley elites. Anderson informed Brilliant that he had won the TED Prize, which came with $100,000 to launch a project of his choosing to make the world a better place (other winners have included Bill Clinton, Bono and scientist E.O. Wilson). Brilliant, who didn’t know who Anderson was, thought it was a crank call.