The emeritus professor donated an extraordinary sum of US$1 billion to permanently cover tuition for students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York City.
One of the largest donations ever made to an academic institution in the United States has Ruth Gottesman as its protagonist. This philanthropist and former professor, now 94, who has dedicated her life to serving others through her profession, has decided to leave her mark on the world with a monumental gift. In line with her principles, she donated US$1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, located in the city’s poorest borough, to cover tuition fees for students in perpetuity. The amount represents about US$59,000 per student annually.
This announcement, as astonishing as it was unexpected for students, means that those currently in their final year will be reimbursed for the tuition of their last semester, and beginning in August, all students—including those already enrolled—will have their tuition fully covered.
With a doctorate in Educational Sciences from the prestigious Columbia University, Professor Ruth Gottesman joined the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1968. Today, despite her advanced age, she continues to serve on the university’s Board of Trustees. During her career, she identified a series of learning problems that were often unrecognized or misdiagnosed. From her observations and fieldwork, she developed new methods for detecting, assessing, and treating learning disorders, changing the lives of thousands of children.
An Unexpected Gift
The benefactor of thousands of medical students, Professor Ruth Gottesman, is the widow of David “Sandy” Gottesman, one of the earliest investors in Warren Buffett’s multinational conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway.
Sandy, her husband of 72 years, passed away at 96 in September 2022. “When my husband died, without having known beforehand, I discovered that he had left me a full portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway shares,” the professor told the media in an interview. The instructions for handling such fortune were brief, simple, and framed as a suggestion, written in a note: “Do what you think is right with it.”
“Without hesitation, I immediately knew that this fortune, an unexpected gift to me, would go toward supporting quality education, especially in such a crucial field as medicine, and at the institution that, in my youth, gave me the opportunity to grow and develop as a professional and to help so many children,” said the former professor. And although Ruth’s husband never knew how the money he left her would ultimately be used, it is likely that, had he known, he would have approved without question.
A Revolution in Charity
In a press statement, Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s dean, Dr. Yaron Yomer, declared that Gottesman’s donation is “revolutionary” and “transformative” for the institution, and that it “radically changes our ability to continue supporting our student body, committed as we are to our mission of health and quality of life. This donation opens the doors to many who today cannot afford the cost of a medical education and who deserve the chance to pursue their dream.”
The dean added that the generous donation from Professor Gottesman will be a factor that “frees and inspires all our students to pursue their boldest projects and ideas, which would otherwise remain only as plans and dreams.”
Gottesman knows she may not live to see many of the doctors who will graduate thanks to her help, but she is certain her contribution will throw open the doors of medical education to many new students “whose economic circumstances are so precarious and difficult that they would not even consider the possibility of attending medical school,” she told the university authorities.
Unlike other notable donors, who set conditions or seek to attach their names to charitable works to be remembered by posterity, Professor Ruth Gottesman has asked that the name of the medical school remain unchanged. Her wish is that the institution, founded in 1955 and named in honor of Albert Einstein, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed the Theory of Relativity, should remain as it is.
