Philanthropy
A scientist and businessman, he was particularly interested in improving education, which he called "biological humanics." Along with Cecil Green, he was a co-founder of St. Mark's School of Texas in 1950; their endowment included the donation of a planetarium, observatory, and math-science quadrangle. He was also a major donor to many universities and served on the boards of Southern Methodist University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. He also co-founded the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest in 1961, which became the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in 1969. In 2001, his wife Margaret endowed the Eugene McDermott Scholars Program at the University. The couple also gifted Fredericksburg, Texas with a home for the county's Pioneer Memorial Library by restoring the 1882 Gillespie County Courthouse. He was actively involved in the arts, serving not only on the Boards of the Dallas Public Library, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, but also helping conceive of the Margo Jones Theatre, an early experiment in theatre in the round. MIT's Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts was created in his honor in 1974.
Read more about this topic: Eugene Mc Dermott
Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)