The Green Revolution
In the early 1940s, disease was destroying half of the wheat harvest in Mexico, and the country’s farmers (like many others in the developing world) were unable to produce enough Read more…
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Loomis Laboratory
Finding himself bored in the practice of law as a young man, Alfred Loomis returned to an earlier interest in scientific experimentation—befriending internationally prominent experimenters and conducting quite advanced investigations Read more…
Laying the Intellectual Foundation for Racial Equality
In 1935, the board of the Carnegie Corporation expressed interest in “negro problems” in the United States, and the extent to which they could be reduced through education. This led Read more…
Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Herbert Hoover, now remembered mainly as a President, was both a wealthy businessman and a prominent humanitarian and donor. Orphaned at an early age, he had a lifelong devotion to Read more…
Saving European Intellectuals
As fascism swept Europe, scholars, artists, scientists, and religious leaders began to come under serious official pressure. In Germany, and later the countries that Germany overran, some were discharged from Read more…
Inventing Molecular Biology
By the early 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation had dramatically accelerated the fields of chemistry and physics through its grants. In 1932 the foundation hired mathematician Warren Weaver to create programs Read more…
Making Books Talk for the Blind
For most of history, the enormous repository of human knowledge represented by books was out of reach for the blind. Only a small percentage of persons with vision loss have Read more…
Launching Rocketry
Robert Goddard was the world’s greatest genius in rocketry, which only existed in science fiction when he penned his first articles about it in high school. After he earned a Read more…
200-inch Telescope
The pioneering U.S.-based telescopes used by scientists to make fundamental scientific discoveries have been products of private philanthropy. The first modern mega-telescope was the 60-inch reflector, at that point the Read more…
Commonwealth Fund Scholarship
The philanthropic foundation set up by the Harkness family with Standard Oil earnings was called the Commonwealth Fund. In 1925 Edward Harkness—one of the most active and most effective donors Read more…
Enabling Aeronautics and Commercial Aviation
Harry Guggenheim served as one of America’s first naval pilots in the First World War. By 1925 he had interested his father, Daniel—the multimillionaire mining industrialist and philanthropist—in donating a Read more…
Economic Research
The same philanthropic impulse that produced a slew of private scientific organizations in the 1920s to improve American governance (see 1919 entry on Public-Policy list) also created new expertise to Read more…
Private Scholarly Institutes to Guide Government
In its early years, Andrew Carnegie’s main foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, had a Republican board that was anxious to improve the quality of American governance without increasing the size of Read more…
The Community Foundation
From modest beginnings, Frederick Goff rose as a lawyer at John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, then became president of the Cleveland Trust Company, where he experimented with theories on improving philanthropy. Read more…
Franklin Institute of Technology
Benjamin Franklin is most often thought of in connection to his adopted city of Philadelphia, but he was raised in Boston, and remembered his birth city at his death. His Read more…
Creating Business Philanthropy
During the period when Julius Rosenwald was building Sears, Roebuck into the nation’s biggest retailer, he was also pioneering many novel combinations of business and philanthropy. In 1907, just after Read more…
Sage Social Science
When upstate New York financier and railroad builder Russell Sage died in 1906, he left his fortune to his wife, Olivia, who the very next year poured $10 million into Read more…
Andrew Carnegie Popularizes Pensions
With the aim of improving the financial security of instructors, and with direct prodding and involvement from Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching researched, planned, and Read more…
Strengthening the Southern Poor
At the turn of the last century, years before he set up his namesake foundation, John D. Rockefeller and his son Junior began efforts to improve life in the former Read more…
Millions of Lives Saved by Pasteurized Milk
Nathan Straus is little remembered today, though he is one of the most effective philanthropists in American history. He immigrated from Bavaria with his family as a small child in Read more…