A record $1 billion donation was given to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx by the 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street billionaire, with the requirement that the money be used to pay for all future tuition for students.
The contribution – made by Dr. Ruth Gottesman – is among the biggest gifts ever earmarked to a US educational institution and perhaps the biggest ever given to a medical school.
Ms. Gottesman used to work as a professor at Einstein, where she oversaw literacy initiatives, created a screening exam, and conducted research on learning difficulties. Her late husband, David Gottesman, often known as Sandy, was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had invested early in the company that Buffett founded, Berkshire Hathaway.
In an interview with The New York Times, Ms. Gottesman recounted that her husband “left me, unbeknownst to me, a whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock,” when he passed away in 2022 at the age of 96. “Do whatever you think is right with it,” was the straightforward directive, she recalled.
She noted that she knew right away what she intended to do. “I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition,” she said.
Apart from its astounding magnitude, the contribution is noteworthy since it is going to a hospital in the Bronx, which is the poorest borough in the city, and the one with a high percentage of early fatalities.
The widow learned that tuition at Einstein Medical School is more than $59,000 year and that many graduates had crippling debt from medical school—often more than $200,000—after speaking with several potential students.
“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.
Einstein Medical School won’t be the first to do away with fees. When New York University announced in 2018 that it will start providing free tuition to medical students, the number of applicants increased dramatically.
Notably, a requirement of Dr. Gottesman’s donation is that the Einstein College of Medicine continue to exist under its current name. The medical school was named after the scientist who created the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein, and it opened its doors in 1955.
