$1 billion donation provides free tuition at medical school

The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a New York medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for all students going forward.

The donor, Ruth Gottesman, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and ran literacy programs. It is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school.

The fortune came from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate Buffett built.

The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. The Bronx has a high rate of premature deaths and ranks as the unhealthiest county in New York.

Gottesman said her donation would enable new doctors to begin their careers without medical school debt. She also hoped it would broaden the student body to include people who could not otherwise afford to go to medical school.

“We have terrific medical students, but this will open it up for many other students whose economic status is such that they wouldn’t even think about going to medical school,” Gottesman said.

Tuition at Einstein is more than $59,000 a year. According to the school, nearly 50% of its students owed more than $200,000 after graduating.

It is a condition of Gottesman’s gift that the Einstein College of Medicine not change its name.