The $1.5 billion donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in New York’s poorest suburb.
Dr. Ruth Gottesman had that very decision to make when she found out in 2022 that her husband had left her a staggering amount of money. “He left me, unbeknownst to me, a whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock,” she told The New York Times. Gottesman, 93, a former professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and current chair of the board of trustees, decided the best way to invest her billion dollars was to pay medical school tuition for all students at the college, in perpetuity.