The widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx, New York, medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which will cover tuition for all students going forward.
Dr. Ruth Gottesman, 93, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test, and ran literacy programs, The New York Times reported.
Her $1 billion donation is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school, the newspaper reported.
Gottesman inherited the money from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who ran an investment firm, First Manhattan, and who had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway.
While her husband ran his investment firm, Gottesman had a long career at Einstein, as director of psychoeducational services. She is on Einstein's board of trustees and is currently the chair, The New York Times reported.
Gottesman's husband died in 2022 at age 96. "He left me, unbeknownst to me, a whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock," she told the newspaper. The instructions were simple: "Do whatever you think is right with it," she recalled.
She realized she wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition, she said. There was enough money to do that in perpetuity.
Tuition is more than $59,000 a year, and many doctors graduated with crushing medical school debt, often more than $200,000. Einstein ranks 13th among top U.S. medical schools for graduate success in academic medicine and biomedical research.
Future medical students will be able to embark on their careers without the debt burden, and she hopes her $1 billion donation will also enable a wider pool of aspiring doctors to apply to medical school.
"We have terrific medical students, but this will open it up for many other students whose economic status is such that they wouldn't even think about going to medical school," she said to The New York Times. "That's what makes me very happy about this gift. I'm just so proud and so humbled — both — that I could do it."
It is a condition of the gift that the Einstein College of Medicine not change its name. The name, Gottesman noted, could not be beat. "We've got the gosh-darn name — we've got Albert Einstein."
Peter Malbin ✉
Peter Malbin, a Newsmax writer, covers news and politics. He has 30 years of news experience, including for the New York Times, New York Post and Newsweek.com.
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