Charles Munger, Warren Buffett’s Longtime Business Partner, Makes $65 Million GiftThe New York Times
By Michael J. de la Merced October 24, 2014 12:01 amOctober 24, 2014 12:01 am
Charles Munger has not been shy in giving away the wealth he has accumulated as vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Credit Lane Hickenbottom/ReutersCharles T. Munger has been known for many things over his decades-long career, including longtime business partner of Warren E. Buffett; successful investor and lawyer; and plain-spoken commentator with a wide following.
Now Mr. Munger, 90, can add another title to that list: deep-pocketed benefactor to the field of theoretical physics.
He was expected to announce on Friday that he has donated $65 million to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The gift — the largest in the school’s history — will go toward building a 61-bed residence for visitors to the institute, which brings together physicists for weeks at a time to exchange ideas.
“U.C.S.B. has by far the most important program for visiting physicists in the world,” Mr. Munger said in a telephone interview. “Leading physicists routinely are coming to the school to talk to one another, create new stuff, cross-fertilize ideas.”
The donation is the latest gift by Mr. Munger, a billionaire who has not been shy in giving away the wealth he has accumulated as vice chairman of Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to charitable causes.
Though perhaps not as prominent a donor as his business partner, who cocreated the Giving Pledge campaign for the world’s richest people to commit their wealth to philanthropy, Mr. Munger has frequently donated big sums to schools like Stanford and the Harvard-Westlake School. (He has not signed on to the Giving Pledge campaign.)
The biggest beneficiary of his largess thus far has been the University of Michigan, his alma mater. Last year alone, he gave $110 million worth of Berkshire shares — one of the biggest gifts in the university’s history — to create a new residence intended to help graduate students from different areas of study mingle and share ideas.
That same idea of intellectual cross-pollination underpins the Kavli Institute, which over 35 years has established itself as a haven for theoretical physicists from around the world to meet and discuss potential new developments in their field.
Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the institute has produced advances in the understanding of white dwarf stars, string theory and quantum computing.
A former director of the institute, David J. Gross, shared in the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for work that shed new light on the fundamental force that binds together the atomic nucleus.
“Away from day-to-day responsibilities, they are in a different mental state,” Lars Bildsten, the institute’s current director, said of the center’s visitors. “They’re more willing to wander intellectually.”
To Mr. Munger, such interactions are crucial for the advancement of physics. He cited international conferences attended by the likes of Einstein and Marie Curie.
Mr. Munger himself did not study physics for very long, having taken a class at the California Institute of Technology while in the Army during World War II. But as an avid reader of scientific biography, he came to appreciate the importance of the field.
And he praised the rise of the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a leading haven for physics, particularly given its status as a relatively young research institution.
But while the Kavli Institute conducts various programs throughout the year for visiting scientists, it has long lacked a way for physicists to spend time outside of work hours during their stays. A permanent residence hall would allow them to mingle even more, in the hope of fostering additional eureka moments.
“We want to make their hardest choice, ‘Which barbecue to go to?’ ” Mr. Bildsten joked.
Though Mr. Munger has some ties to the University of California, Santa Barbara — a grandson is an alumnus — he was first introduced to the Kavli Institute through a friend who lives in Santa Barbara.
During one of the pair’s numerous fishing trips, that friend, Glen Mitchel, asked the Berkshire vice chairman to help finance construction of a new residence. The university had already reserved a plot of land for the dormitory in case the institute raised the requisite funds.
“It wasn’t a hard sell,” Mr. Munger said.
“Physics is vitally important,” he added. “Everyone knows that.”
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