A leading scientific prize of the 23rd century, won by Richard Daystrom at the age of twenty-four for the duotronic breakthrough that gave Starfleet its computers.
The Zee-Magnees Prize is a high honour for scientific achievement. Its best-known winner is Doctor Richard Daystrom, who received it as a young man for developing duotronics, the basis of the computers fitted to the starships of Kirk's time.
The prize is mentioned in the Original Series episode The Ultimate Computer. As Daystrom installs his M-5 multitronic unit aboard the Enterprise, Kirk and McCoy discuss the weight of that early triumph. McCoy suggests that a man who was hailed as a genius in his twenties has spent the rest of his life trying to equal himself.
That pressure helps explain why Daystrom refuses to accept that the M-5 is dangerous even after it destroys a freighter and attacks other starships during war games.