* Astronomy

When University of California, Berkeley, astrophysicist George Smoot received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics a year ago, his dreams for spending his $700,000 share of the prize ran far beyond purchasing a sporty car or a new home.
Instead, he wanted to create a lasting centre where he and other scientists - in particular, young postdoctoral researchers - could tackle cosmic questions whose solutions would be worthy of future Nobel Prizes.
That dream, the Berkeley Centre for Cosmological Physics, has now become reality, with a $500,000 endowment gift from Smoot and additional gifts totalling $8.1 million.

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