PROVIDENCE – Brown University has named its medical school in honor of businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist Warren Alpert, after receiving a $100 million gift from The Warren Alpert Foundation.
Brown said the school was named “The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University” by the Brown Corporation, the university’s governing body, during a special meeting on Jan. 18.
“Warren Alpert and The Warren Alpert Foundation have made support for health care and biomedical research their top priority,” said Ruth J. Simmons, the university’s president, said yesterday in a statement announcing the gift. “With this extraordinary gift, the Alpert Foundation is not only supporting generations of talented young people who will enter medical careers, but is also improving the environment for medical care and research in the State of Rhode Island. Naming the medical school in honor of Mr. Alpert is a fitting tribute to his long-standing interest in excellence in medical care.”
Alpert – a recipient of the Purple Heart for his actions at Omaha Beach in 1944 – began his own business in 1950 with, as he put it, “$1,000 and a used car.” He is now sole owner of Warren Equities Inc., ranked by Forbes magazine among the top 400 privately owned U.S. companies.
His foundation’s gift is the largest ever to the medical school, the university said. It also is a significant contribution to the ongoing fund drive, Boldly Brown: The Campaign for Academic Enrichment, which aims to raise $1.4 billion to fund a wide range of priorities; the Alpert Foundation’s gift brings its total to $935 million.
Some of the money will go toward a new building for the medical school, Brown said. The gift also will be used to provide scholarships for medical students; to create two endowed professorships; and to establish funds supporting faculty recruitment, biomedical research and innovations in medical education.
Additional information is available at www.brown.edu.
