Caltech’s coffers are $600 million richer, thanks to semiconductor pioneer Gordon Moore, his wife Betty, and the foundation the couple created in 2000. Their combined gift—$300 million from the Moores and the same again from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation—is the largest-ever donation to a university, eclipsing last year’s record-breaking gifts of $400 million to Stanford University from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and an anonymous $360 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
It’s too early to say how Caltech will use the gift, says provost Steve Koonin. “There are a lot of good ideas. They range from programs to address instrumentation needs, to new research initiatives, to maintaining the quality of people at all levels, to buildings.” The Moore gift, he says, comes to nearly a third of what the university estimates it needs to stay at the forefront of research and education. “It’s particularly wonderful that they’ve...
