The widow of a top Warren Buffett investor has donated $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx to cover tuition for all future students.
Ruth Gottesman’s gift is the largest ever to a U.S. medical school, according to a statement from the college. She’s the chair of Einstein’s board of trustees and was a longtime professor of pediatrics at the school.
Her husband, David, died at 96 in 2022. He was a friend of Buffett for six decades, and his early investments in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. gave him a net worth of almost $3 billion as of mid-2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“This transformational gift is intended to attract a talented and diverse pool of individuals who may not otherwise have the means to pursue a medical education,” the college said in its statement.
Medical schools are notoriously expensive, often saddling doctors with exorbitant student loans. That has led at least one other billionaire donor, DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen, to start paying for tuition for medical students—in his case, at UCLA.
David Gottesman, known as Sandy, ran the investment firm First Manhattan and was chairman of Yeshiva University’s board of trustees.
An earlier gift by the couple helped create the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine.
“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,” Ruth Gottesman said in a statement.
The donation was earlier reported by the New York Times.
