Academics reject wealth not from caution but from ambition for lasting fame.

Evidence

A don surrenders something, and in particular the chance of making large sums of money—it is very hard for a professor to make £2000 a year; and security of tenure is naturally one of the considerations which make this particular surrender easy. That is not why Housman would have refused to be Lord Simon or Lord Beaverbrook. He would have rejected their careers because of his ambition, because he would have scorned to be a man to be forgotten in twenty years. — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 164

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 164
• XREF: connects to: Fame-seeking is motivated by continued social invitation, not income. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 75