Chicago science donation

A $20 million gift will go toward new buildings and programs in the physical sciences at the University of Chicago. The money comes from futures trader William Eckhardt, who earned his master’s degree in mathematics at Chicago in 1970.

It’s the largest gift in the history of the physical sciences division, says the division’s dean, Robert Fefferman. “It will allow us to do things we wouldn’t have been able to dream about.”

To start with, a building that Enrico Fermi worked in is to be renovated. In honor of the gift, it will be renamed the Eckhardt Research Institutes. The building is to be part of a new center for physical and computational sciences.

“The university is launching a very ambitious program in some traditional and some new areas,” Fefferman says. “We are interested in investing in modern computation and its integration around campus—linking modern chemistry and biology, computation and genetics, figuring out what dark energy and dark matter are. … There are all kinds of things that are highly multidisciplinary that are very exciting, many of which will be helped directly by [Eckhardt’s] generosity.”