Business Wire Founder Gives $30-Million to Israeli Science Institute

Lorry Lokey, founder of the corporate-news distribution service Business Wire, has made a $30-million donation to build a research facility and a biochemical-sciences school, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Lokey, who sold Business Wire to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2006 for an amount estimated at over $400-million, said he was inspired to make the gift due to his longstanding admiration for the chemist Chaim Weizmann. The chemist did valuable work on explosives for the Allies in World War I and then pressed the British government to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine after the war. Mr. Lokey explained, “I was impressed by the fact that he asked for something for a group of people and not for himself.”

Mr. Weizmann led the Weizmann Institute of Science as its first president and later became the first president of Israel.