The Nobel Prizes have more history behind them, but a new generation of life science prizes awarded to two local scientists has a bigger payday: at $3 million per prize, more than twice the money.

The brand-new Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, sponsored by a small cadre of technology’s elite, were given to 11 scientists on Wednesday. Among those honored and enriched were two scientists who have long taught an introductory biology class together at MIT: Eric S. Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute and a key player in the Human Genome Project, and Robert Weinberg, a cancer biologist from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, an ­MIT-affiliated research institution.