The US $3-million Fundamental Physics Prize is indeed an interesting experiment, as Alexander Polyakov said when he accepted this year’s award in March. And it is far from the only one of its type. As a News Feature article in Nature discusses, a string of lucrative awards for researchers have joined the Nobel Prizes in recent years. Many, like the Fundamental Physics Prize, are funded from the telephone-number-sized bank accounts of Internet entrepreneurs. These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.

     What’s not to like? Quite a lot, according to a handful of scientists quoted in the News Feature. You cannot buy class, as the old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs cannot buy their prizes the prestige of the Nobels. The new awards are an exercise in self-promotion for those behind them, say scientists. They could distort the achievement-based system of peer-review-led research. They could cement the status quo of peer-reviewed research. They do not fund peer-reviewed research. They perpetuate the myth of the lone genius.

     The goals of the prize-givers seem as scattered as the criticism. Some want to shock, others to draw people into science, or to better reward those who have made their careers in research.

     As Nature has pointed out before, there are some legitimate concerns about how science prizes—both new and old—are distributed. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, launched this year, takes an unrepresentative view of what the life sciences include. But the Nobel Foundation’s limit of three recipients per prize, each of whom must still be living, has long been outgrown by the collaborative nature of modern research—as will be demonstrated by the inevitable row over who is ignored when it comes to acknowledging the discovery of the Higgs boson. The Nobels were, of course, themselves set up by a very rich individual who had decided what he wanted to do with his own money. Time, rather than intention, has given them legitimacy.

     As much as some scientists may complain about the new awards, two things seem clear. First, most researchers would accept such a prize if they were offered one. Second, it is surely a good thing that the money and attention come to science rather than go elsewhere. It is fair to criticize and question the mechanism—that is the culture of research, after all—but it is the prize-givers’ money to do with as they please. It is wise to take such gifts with gratitude and grace.

答案精析：根据题干中的The Fundamental Physics Prize可定位至原文第一段首句。该句提到三百万美元的“基础物理学奖”确实是一个有趣的实验，之后作者又提及这种奖项绝不是唯一的。近年来，一系列给研究人员带来丰厚回报的奖项加入了诺贝尔奖的行列。许多项目，比如基础物理学奖，都是由互联网企业家的银行账户资助的，这些账户都有巨额存款。由此可知，基础物理学奖是对研究人员的丰厚奖励，故正确答案为D。

错项排除：首段内容有提到这些奖项是企业家设立的，但是他们的目的是想用他们的财富来吸引在科学领域取得成功的人的注意，并没有表明企业家想把这当成财富的象征，A项曲解文意，故排除。文章第一段只是提到了一些丰厚回报的奖项加入了诺贝尔奖的行列，第二段也说到这些企业家新贵买不到诺贝尔奖的声望，所以不能说基础物理学奖可能取代诺贝尔奖，故排除B项。文章中没有提到任何关于银行家和投资的信息，故排除C项。

长难句分析：These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.

本句是由and连接的两个并列分句构成。两个并列分句之间的“they say”为插入语，其中they代指第一个分句中的主语These benefactors。第二个分句中的to draw attention to those作目的状语，之后用who引导定语从句，修饰those，用于解释说明这些人的成就。

句意为：这些奖项捐助者说，他们已经在他们各自的领域取得了成功，他们想用他们的财富来吸引人们对那些在科学领域取得成功的人的注意。