Caltech Gets More from Moore

Caltech’s coffers are $600 million richer, thanks to semiconductor pioneer Gordon Moore, his wife Betty, and the foundation the couple created in 2000. Their combined gift—$300 million from the Moores and the same again from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation—is the largest-ever donation to a university, eclipsing last year’s record-breaking gifts of $400 million to Stanford University from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and an anonymous $360 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

It’s too early to say how Caltech will use the gift, says provost Steve Koonin. “There are a lot of good ideas. They range from programs to address instrumentation needs, to new research initiatives, to maintaining the quality of people at all levels, to buildings.” The Moore gift, he says, comes to nearly a third of what the university estimates it needs to stay at the forefront of research and education. “It’s particularly wonderful that they’ve done this in a time of economic turbulence.”

Among the specific projects and broad areas that might get some of the Moore money are the design of the California Extremely Large Telescope, a 30-meter ground-based optical and infrared telescope that Caltech is planning jointly with the University of California; measurements of tectonic plate movement; numerical general relativity; nanoscience; a synchrotron beam line; and facilities for cryoelectron microscopy and functional brain imaging.

Moore earned his fortune from Intel, the chip company he cofounded, and his PhD in chemistry from Caltech, where he’s been a trustee for nearly two decades. “I have a warm place in my heart for Caltech. And it really fulfills a unique role. As a very small, very high-quality institution, they are able to do interdisciplinary science much more easily than bigger schools—and I think that’s where a lot of the important science is,” says Moore. “I would be happy if they didn’t build buildings. I’d rather see the money go for programs,” he adds.

The $300 million from the Moores will arrive over five years, and Caltech has broad discretion as to its use. The foundation will deliver the other $300 million over 10 years, and will help decide how to spend it. The foundation’s thrusts are the environment, scientific research, higher education, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The foundation is still ramping up, but it’s expected to have an endowment of $4.5–5 billion.