Gregory's Server
@mycotropic - I don't think people route their Nobel prize through an institution. Grants, yes - because you apply *through* the university, and the university forces you to give them a cut.
"Most laureates spend their prize money (about $1.4 million) in mundane ways: to pay the mortgage, buy a car or save for rainier days. MIT's Wolfgang Ketterle, one of three scientists to win the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics 2001, said, "I used the Nobel money to buy a house and for the education of my children." Others, meanwhile, such as the late Franco Modigliani, an MIT professor who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985, buy a sailboat. In the following pages: how a smattering of other Nobel laureates spent their winnings."
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848803,00.html
@johncarlosbaez @benleis
You're right of course but I'm a grant funded person so I think in those terms. I've also spent "Start-up"/faculty development money to collect data and publish papers and having a pot of money that big would mean that I could do some of the "unfundable" work I'd like to do! I'd just be certain to do it with as little benefit to the institution as possible given their past behavior.