Richard Goldman, a San Francisco philanthropist and civic leader who co-founded the Goldman Environmental Prize to recognize grass-roots environmental activism around the world, has died. He was 90.

Goldman, a passionate supporter of environmental causes, the Jewish community and Israel, died Monday at his San Francisco home, according to his family.

The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, created in 1951 by Goldman and his wife, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, has given away more than $680 million since its inception. But it is the environmental prize, which annually awards $150,000 each to six activists around the globe, for which the Goldmans are perhaps best known.

Established in 1989 in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the murder of Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist Chico Mendes, the prize has been described as a green Nobel Prize. But rather than honoring heads of state and renowned scientists, it recognizes grass-roots activists and organizers who challenge the powers that be, sometimes at great personal risk.

Recent winners include a Costa Rican conservationist who crusaded against the practice of shark finning and an environmental attorney in Bangladesh who fought for more regulation of her country’s ship-dismantling industry.