tenured professors are the top 1% of academia and they have a pension no?
maybe he sold it to live out his final days with premium care.
maybe they decided his surviving wife would've rather had a liquid estate instead of a shiny medal in a closet.
For instance Professor Vickram Chandra of UC Berkeley [0] made ~$91k in 2016 [1]. Other professors make more, like Professor Alexandrova of UCLA who make ~$146k in 2016 [2]. You can poke around the UCs and compare. Do remember that most PIs labor in grad school for ~7 years, earning barely anything.
I do not know of other databases for other universities that do this, but many US states have sunshine laws that make professor's salaries public information. I know that Colorado also mandates that all public employee's emails are public information too and I think other states do this as well, though I do not have a list of them.
[0]https://english.berkeley.edu/profiles/22
[1]https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/art...
[2]https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/art...
I looked up my friends PI at Berkeley. (no Nobel) $300k
pension 50-75% of salary + retiree healthcare benefits
hard to say someone in that position is going to end up destitute unless they make terrible life choices.