I'm lucky - I probably won't have any loved ones that I'll need to provide for after I die (they can take care of themselves). That means I can use my assets on whatever I want, and most likely, that will be science. The exact amount I can spare depends on how much longer I have to live, but an order of magnitude estimate is $10 million.

I understand that most funding requires proposals from the scientists, which are then peer reviewed. I'm not particularly interested in that. Instead I'm thinking of finding people working on what I'm most interested in (cosmology) and funding them to do whatever they want, trusting in their integrity to use the funds appropriately.

Questions:

1. Is it better to use the funds as a one-shot lump sum, or make it sustainable (that is, keep the principal, and use only the interest on that for funding)?
2. What is a good amount to provide a single professor? Is it better to provide one researcher with the $10 million, or ten different researchers with $1 million, or some other number?
3. How do I go about this? Can I just ask for the professors' bank account numbers, and write in my will to transfer $X into that account?
4. I'd like to talk to the professors, preferably face-to-face, to assess their character. Are the professors likely to be willing to talk?