Chuck Lorre, co-creator of the hit tv comedy The Massive Bang Principle about younger scientists in Southern California, is boosting help for a few of their future real-life counterparts.
Via his household basis, Lorre is pledging $24.5 million to the College of California, Los Angeles to assist extra low-income college students research science and know-how. Including to a program he started in 2015, the donation will double the variety of undergraduate scholarship recipients with monetary must 80 every year, UCLA mentioned in a press release Monday.
“The shortage of funds is one thing I perceive extraordinarily properly,” Lorre mentioned in an interview. He dropped out of the State College of New York at Potsdam and carried a pupil mortgage of about $2,000 for 15 years as a result of he didn’t have the cash to pay it off, he mentioned.
His present will fund the creation of the UCLA Chuck Lorre Students Program, which is able to help college students and supply 4 years of mentoring and different providers, plus alternatives for graduate college funding.
Whereas Lorre, 71, doesn’t have a direct tie to UCLA, he started supporting the college after a suggestion from Sherry Lansing, a buddy who had previously served as a high-ranking Hollywood government and member of the College of California Board of Regents. A UCLA physics professor, David Saltzberg, served as a science advisor for The Massive Bang Principle, and supplied technical assist with formulation proven on whiteboards within the present.
“We at all times wished to get the science proper on the present,” Lorre mentioned. “That was actual math, and that was all from David.”
Lorre additionally created different profitable reveals similar to Two and a Half Males and Younger Sheldon, a derivative of The Massive Bang Principle.