A $15 million gift to Caltech from trustee James F. Rothenberg and his wife will endow fellowships for graduate students and their scientific research, the university announced Monday.
Rothenberg is chairman of the Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos. Inc., and he and wife Anne serve on the boards of several Southern California organizations.
A portion of their gift will bolster the Caltech Innovation Initiative, which funds high-risk, high-reward science that could lead to marketable technologies, according to the university.
“I think that over time there are two drivers of the U.S. economy other than natural resources: education — an educated labor force, an educated populace — and innovation,” Rothenberg said. “As a country, we seem to do better at that than most places in the world.”
“From my perspective, anything I can do to help spur that kind of activity at Caltech makes perfect sense,” he said. “The more you learn about Caltech, the more you see how much gets accomplished with a relatively small faculty and budget.”
In addition to serving on the Caltech Board of Trustees, Rothenberg sits on the boards of Huntington Memorial Hospital, KCET and the RAND Corp.
Anne Rothenberg has worked as a reporter/editor for Life, Fortune and Architectural Digest magazines. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
“The Rothenbergs’ generosity helps the Institute to both create knowledge for the long term and offer solutions to the problems that confront society now,” said Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology. “We are enormously grateful for Jim and Anne’s choice to give so strategically and enthusiastically.”
— City News Service