What would you do with 2.5 million euros? While the most recent Spinoza winners are pondering this question, former winner Theo Rasing has it all figured out. The physics professor won a Spinoza Prize in 2008 and still has a few hundred thousand euros left.

At that time, the prize money was ‘just’ 1.5 million euros and he still has money to spare. In 2009, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) raised its Spinoza Prize money by a million euros to compete with the 2.5 million euro grants awarded by the European Research Council in Brussels.

The nice thing about a Spinoza Prize is the spending freedom that comes with it. ‘I can’t use it for a trip to the Bahamas, but pretty much anything else goes’, says Rasing. ‘As long as I justify my spending afterwards.’ Rasing never considered spending some of the money on an inspirational painting for his office, for example. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate. The money is intended for research purposes, not a nice painting.’

By now, Rasing has spent most of his winnings. ‘I’m not sure exactly how much I have left, but it’s still hundreds of thousands.’ Some of the smaller expenses included an airline ticket for a guest speaker and workshops in his field of expertise. But the majority was reserved for planting new seeds, as he refers to it. ‘The money is mine to spend as I like. This means if someone comes along that I really want to work with, I can use the money for their appointment. I just deduct it from my Spinoza budget. I also look for relevant projects for that person. Once I have the necessary project funding, I stop using my Spinoza funds.’

‘The money is intended for research purposes, not a nice painting.’

One of the faculty’s financial advisors recently informed him that some of his projects were coming to an end and that there was still money left over. ‘In that case, I quickly put one of my Spinoza researchers on the project, which helps me save my winnings.’ It’s all about allocating people and resources at the right time. ‘This is how I’ve managed to make my 1.5 million euros stretch over the course of seven years.’

During the annual dinner for Spinoza laureates in Utrecht, the researchers exchange money-saving tips like this. According to Rasing, most of the attendees are good with money anyway. ‘They’re great at what they do, which means they’re also good at acquiring funds for their research projects.’