Computing is a popular career for many physicists who decide that research is too competitive or too poorly paid. Most of them make a good living from computing and some are very successful. But few, if any, have done as well as Nathan Myhrvold. At 37 he is the chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation, a member of the company’s executive committee, and in charge of a research budget that is set to triple over the next two to three years.

Myhrvold has already made his mark on the research enterprise at Microsoft. In 1991, five years after he joined the company, he founded Microsoft Research to carry out “basic and applied research in computer science which could make a positive difference in people’s lives and set new directions in the field”. Having started with just a handful of scientists, Microsoft Research now includes more than 100 researchers.

Microsoft’s recent conversion to the benefits of basic research is in marked contrast to the shift from long-term research to short-term product development in many American high-technology companies over recent years. Indeed, even the US government seems likely to reduce support for basic research in its attempts to balance the budget. “That’s a terrible mistake, ” says Myhrvold. “All industry of today is based on the fundamental science of 30 years ago, less fundamental research of 20 years ago, and interesting research of 10 years ago. [Reduction in support for fundamental research] would be a disastrous state of affairs if continued.”

Microsoft’s response, overseen by Myhrvold, is to treble its expenditure on what it terms “basic research” over the next two to three years, and to ensure that the research budget grows continuously after that. The investment could reach $330m over the next five years and will lead to the creation of the largest software research facility in the world, with perhaps close to 500 researchers. Of course, that money won’t pay for basic research in the academic sense. “We’re not supporting basic mathematics; even we don’t have the resources to do that, ” says Myhrvold. “We do a lot of stuff that computer scientists call pure research” – work with a distant horizon for conversion into products.

While basic research at Microsoft doesn’t strictly fall under the physics rubric, Myhrvold regards it as appropriate for the physics-trained mind. “There’s a tremendous amount of intellectual challenge in doing computer research, ” he argues. “It’s even more intellectual than physics in that you’re inventing something. It’s satisfying for people who like to do challenging, intellectual work, of which physicists are examples.”

Myhrvold’s own background is in mathematics and physics. He has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degrees in geophysics and space physics, both from the University of California at Los Angeles. He also has a master’s in mathematical economics and a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton University. Myhrvold wrote his thesis on quantum field theory in curved space – near black holes and in the early moments of the universe – and quantum gravity. He recalls that after his PhD, he applied “for about 62 post-doctoral positions and didn’t expect any replies for about two months”. But almost immediately, he says, “I got a call back from Stephen Hawking. He offered me a job, and I said yes.”

At that point, Myhrvold was “absolutely intending to become an academic physicist”. However, he took a three-month leave of absence after his first year with Hawking at Cambridge to work on a software project that he had previously started with two physicist friends in California. He never returned to the academic world. By the end of the three months, the project had become the basis of a company, Dynamical Systems Research (DSR), and Myhrvold had taken on the full-time job of company president.

The company aimed to sell a software system for personal computers that was intended, in effect, to be a mini-version of the program that Microsoft later introduced as Windows. Initially, DSR attracted interest from some investors. In their naivety, however, Myhrvold and his colleagues did not realise that other companies with more commercial clout were working on similar ideas. When IBM launched a similar product called TopView in 1985, interest in DSR started to dry up. Then Microsoft bought the company, in the hope of using DSR’s software in the development of Windows.

As it happened, Microsoft didn’t use the DSR code. But Myhrvold started a rapid ascent through Microsoft’s corporate ranks. Starting with the title of director of special projects, he moved on to become group vice-president of applications and content, and then senior vice-president of the advanced technology division, before founding Microsoft Research, which he continues to manage in his capacity as the company’s chief technology officer.

Throughout that time, he has continued to work with and hire physicists. The research organization currently employs about 30 physics PhDs to work on computer science. What’s the attraction? “Computer science is a young discipline, ” explains Myhrvold. “You can become very successful in it by learning a small amount. ”

While he prefers the physicists he hires to “have got into computers a bit”, Myhrvold regards computer science as “easy to pick up as long as people are quite bright and really want to learn”. As an added incentive, he points out that many software projects involve teams of researchers, similar to experiments in high-energy physics.

There is, however, more to Nathan Myhrvold than computers and he has an active life outside Microsoft. He has bungee-jumped, raced Formula 1 cars, and won first and second places in the world barbecue championships in Tennessee. In fact cooking has become a significant part of his life. Every so often he puts in time as an assistant chef at a French restaurant in Seattle, close to Microsoft’s headquarters.

Does another career beckon? “I’m pretty good as a chef,” Myhrvold admits, “but being a professional chef is very difficult. You have to do everything in real time.” But having achieved so much by the age of 37, nothing seems impossible.