Obituary: Robert A. Pritzker, 85, Donor and Co-Founder of Architecture Prize
October 31, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Robert A. Pritzker, a businessman, engineer, and philanthropist whose family launched the world’s top honor for architects, died Thursday at the age of 85, according to The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The cause was Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Pritzker and his late brothers, Jay and Donald, headed the Marmon Group, a conglomerate that built up the Hyatt hotel chain and owned numerous lesser-known industrial enterprises. The Hyatt Foundation administers the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, which the family established in 1979.
A native Chicagoan, Mr. Pritzker was also a major donor to the University of Chicago and his alma mater, the Illinois Institute of Technology, to which he gave $60-million in 1996.
