Students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine erupted in cheers and tears on Monday as Dr Ruth Gottesman, a former professor, announced the school would be tuition-free because of her $1bn donation.
The statement from Einstein noted students in their final year will be reimbursed for their spring 2024 tuition, and from August, all students, including those who are currently enrolled, will receive free tuition.
The college is in the Bronx, New York City’s poorest borough. Tuition at the school is nearly $59,000 each year.
Gottesman’s gift is the largest donation ever given to a medicine school and the largest ever donation made to a US school.
She is the 93-year-old widow of a major Wall Street Investor, and a former professor at Albert Einstein.
Dr Gottesman began working at the school in 1968. She studied learning disabilities, ran literacy programmes and developed widely used screening and evaluation protocols, reports the BBC.
Her late husband, David „Sandy” Gottesman, founded a prominent investment house and was an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s multinational conglomerate. He died in September 2022 at the age of 96.
„I am very thankful to my late husband, Sandy, for leaving these funds in my care, and l feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause”, said Dr Gottesman.
In an interview with the New York Times, she recalled that her late husband had left her a „whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock” when he died with the instructions to „do whatever you think is right with it”.
„I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition”, Dr Gottesman said she immediately realized. „There was enough money to do that in perpetuity.”
