Northwestern's Gift

The largest helping of gravy ladled out to any U.S. educational institution since 1924* went to Northwestern University last week: over $20,000,000 from Chicago's late Walter Patton Murphy, inventor and manufacturer of railway equipment who died last month (TIME, Dec. 28). The gift boosted Northwestern assets to $82,662,000, put it in sixth place among heavily endowed U.S. universities (slightly behind Rochester, well behind Columbia, Chicago, Harvard and Yale). Twenty years ago Northwestern's fortune was a mere $12,000,000.

Manufacturer Murphy had already given Northwestern $6,735,000 in 1939 to build a Technological Institute, which was dedicated last summer. The new fund is earmarked for the development of the Institute, which practical, self-trained Manufacturer Murphy decreed must be so closely integrated with U.S. industry that students will spend alternate terms in plants and classrooms.

*That year the late tobaccoman James Duke gave $40,000,000 to North Carolina's Trinity College (thereupon named Duke University).

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