One of Taiwan’s richest, Samuel Yin is the grandson of the founder of the Ruentex Group, a billion-dollar industrial conglomerate with operations in financial services, construction, medical services, and retail. In 2010, Yin became the first person without an academic background in engineering to be given the Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research by the prestigious American Society of Civil Engineers. Also a proponent of entrepreneurship, Yin, along with Cher Wang, provided seed funding for Gogoro, the electric scooter startup that developed a battery-swapping refuelling platform.

Yin’s greatest dream was to set up an international award akin to the Nobel Prize. In 2012, he established the Tang Prize, funded by US$100 million of his own money, to reward excellent research in the areas of Sustainable Development, Biopharmaceutical Science, Sinology, and Rule of Law.