Wickliffe Draper - Later Life and Personality

Later Life and Personality

The Pioneer Fund described Draper as:

By nature introverted, shy, and modest, Draper refused honorary doctorates or having university buildings named in his honor. The only distinctions he accepted were for his role in the discovery of Asselar Man and his military decorations. Draper insisted that his role as benefactor to many charitable causes (including military history, archaeology, conservation, and population problems) remain anonymous. He never married and when he died in 1972, he left a significant portion of his assets to the Pioneer Fund to continue its scientific philanthropy.

Throughout his life, Draper maintained a low profile, as did the Pioneer Fund. When Draper died in 1972 from prostate cancer, he left $1.4 million to the Pioneer Fund.

Draper's work has become more controversial since the publication of The Bell Curve (1994), because the Pioneer Fund financially sponsored much of the research reported in the book. The publication of The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (1994) by Stefan Kühl resulted in further publicity for Draper and the Fund.

Read more about this topic:  Wickliffe Draper

Famous quotes containing the words life and/or personality:

    If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)

    Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)