‘You’d never know he had a dime’
Yet Mac chemistry prof Richard Tomlinson jolted Canada with a $60-million gift to McGill
McMaster University chemistry professor Richard Tomlinson made Canadian history when he gave his alma mater McGill University a $60-million donation.
The gift in May 2000 was, at the time, the largest ever given by a Canadian philanthropist to a Canadian charitable institution.
Tomlinson, who died Jan. 29 at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 94, made his millions by starting in 1973 to invest on the advice of a friend in Burlington-based Gennum Corp.
The firm (now part of Semtech) went on to establish itself as the world’s largest maker of microchips for hearing aids and one of the biggest suppliers of chips for TV studio equipment.
Tomlinson’s donation grabbed headlines.
The largest donation before that had been in 1998 when diamond prospector Stewart Blusson gave $50 million to the University of British Columbia.
“I support great universities and education and McGill seemed to fill the role,” Tomlinson told The Spectator about why he made the donation.
Tomlinson’s donation would be overtaken.
Research In Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis donated $100 million in company shares to create the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo in October, 2000.
McMaster made its own history when it received $105-million from billionaire businessperson Michael DeGroote in 2003.
This isn’t to say Tomlinson, who taught at McMaster for four decades, never helped out his employer.
The Richard H. Tomlinson Gallery in the McMaster Museum of Art was made possible through his donations.
He has been given credit in saving McMaster’s nuclear reactor when it faced closure after losing government funding.
He suggested it be employed to “make millions” and helped develop it in 1993 into making radioactive iodines and nuclicides used in the treatment of cancers.
“I felt the reactor had a great future in relation to medicine,” Tomlinson told the Spec.
McMaster gave Tomlinson an honorary science degree in 1997 when he was active in researching nuclear fusion, nuclear chemistry and isotope production. He received an honorary science degree from McGill in 2001 and was named to the Order of Canada in 2004.
Tomlinson was one of five children born to George and Anne Tomlinson of Montreal.
His father was a well-known chemist and scientist who developed a special furnace used in the pulp and paper industry.
Despite his wealth, Tomlinson lived a modest lifestyle. He was an avid golfer and runner, and drove a 1975 Cadillac for years.
About his only indulgence was what one friend in 2000 described as an “excellent wine cellar.”
“You would never know he has a dime to spend,” friend and founding Gennum president Wally Pieczonka told the Spec once.
Tomlinson was predeceased by his wife Rowena. He is survived by four nieces and two nephews.