June 23, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
David Rockefeller has made his second $100-million pledge in three months, announcing that Rockefeller University would receive that sum after he dies. In April, Mr. Rockefeller said the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, would also get $100-million from his estate.
Mr. Rockefeller, who this month turned 90, was chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees from 1950 to 1975 and now serves as its honorary chairman and a life trustee. His grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, founded the institution in 1901 as the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research.
$5-Million Annual Gifts
David Rockefeller said that this year he would start giving the university $5-million annually until he dies — the same pledge he made to the modern-art museum.
University officials said that $70-million of Mr. Rockefeller’s pledge would be used to support research, pay for campus renovations, and finance efforts to modernize university facilities that were built in the early 1900s.
“Many of those buildings house science labs that were not really built for the type of science done today,” said Joseph Bonner, the university’s director of communications.
The remaining $30-million of the gift will endow the David Rockefeller Graduate Program, and will help pay for graduate work focused on global health problems related to HIV/AIDS, SARS, and other diseases.
