July 01, 2008
Princeton U. Receives $100-Million Pledge to Stimulate Research to Prevent Global Warming
By Maria Di Mento
Gerhard R. Andlinger, an investment manager, has pledged $100-million to Princeton University, in large part to stimulate research and education on efforts to prevent global warming.
University officials said that Mr. Andlinger intends to pay off all of the pledge in about four or five years.
He is the founder and chairman of Andlinger & Company, an international investment and management firm in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science plans to use $70-million to create a center for the study of energy and the environment, and to direct the remainder of the money toward engineering research laboratories, the hiring of four new faculty members, and an endowment to finance research projects that are too new to qualify for federal support.
A portion of the money will also support a program that will bring industry experts, policy makers, scientists, engineers, and scholars together to study and work on energy and environmental issues.
“We don’t want to conduct this kind of research in the absence of a dialogue with people in industry and others who work on these matters,” said Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton.
Ms. Tilghman said the university hopes the work of the new center will enable scientists to use their discoveries to help scientists and engineers create better ways to manage carbon-dioxide emissions and create new types of alternative energies.
“We also hope to educate the next generation of scientists, engineers, and policy makers who will take out of Princeton a deep sensitivity to global warming, and educate citizens,” said Ms. Tilghman.
Mr. Andlinger, who is 77, graduated from Princeton in 1952. He was born in Austria and came to the United States in 1948 when he won an essay-writing contest sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune. He earned a degree in economics and Arabic from the university and an M.B.A. from Harvard. He then joined the U.S. Army, where he worked in military intelligence, and later became a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. He started his investment firm in 1976.
Mr. Andlinger has previously donated $27-million to Princeton. He gave approximately $2-million to the university in 1991 for a professorship in the social sciences, and in 2000 he gave the university $25-million to establish the Andlinger Center for the Humanities.
Mr. Andlinger’s is one of the biggest gifts announced so far in 2008; to learn more, see The Chronicle’s searchable database of large donations and pledges.
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