Smoot donates Nobel prize money to charity

BERKELEY, Calif., March 23 (UPI) -- University Of California-Berkeley astrophysicist George Smoot is donating his Nobel Prize money to a charitable fund for science education.

The Nobel prize was worth about $1.4 million, the Oakland Tribune said.

Smoot, a physics professor at Berkeley and an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is the second Nobel prize winner from the university to convert his prize money into a donor-advised fund at the $270 million East Bay Community Foundation.

Smoot's charitable fund will go to further science education and training by funding fellowships for graduate and postdoctoral students, the newspaper said.