The parents of a late New York City educator who pioneered ways for poor kids to succeed in science are battling her widower over part of her estate that they say is earmarked for charity.
Jhumki Basu, an NYU professor whose Columbia Teachers College dissertation about teaching physics to city kids won national recognition, had been married to Alexandros Konstantinou for two years when she succumbed to breast cancer in 2008 at age 31.
The Upper West Side scientist — who has since remarried and is receiving 80 percent of Basu’s $1 million estate — now wants another $400,000 that her California parents had held in a trust fund for her schooling.
Parents Dipak and Radha Basu say that since they used other money to pay for their daughter’s education, she had asked them to instead donate the funds to scholarships for poor students.
“Inexplicably, [Konstantinou] claims those funds as part of his inheritance,” the Basus’ Manhattan Surrogate’s Court papers say.
Konstantinou declined to comment.