The name Einstein has long been synonymous with genius, but it goes back to a man and his equation, E = mc². In his lifetime, Albert Einstein was the world’s most famous man and most famous Jew and most famous refugee (the last two being connected, as he had to flee his native Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933). Time magazine selected him as the Person of the Century. He even has a part in the film “Oppenheimer.”
But with Einstein’s fame and worldwide acclaim as a man of science, he only bestowed his name to one institution, a medical school in the Bronx, in 1953, two years before he died.
It was to be a different kind of med school, open to all students and faculty, regardless of race and religion, breaking with the shameful legacy of limiting Jews and other “undesirables” from medical schools. Before Einstein, there was Middlesex University in Massachusetts, which did not bar students. Yet Middlesex failed and its campus was taken over by Brandeis University (which doesn’t have a med school).
So it was tried again in New York. Founded under the auspices of a Jewish institution, Yeshiva University, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was nonsectarian from its start and the great physicist freely gave his name.
In recent years, Einstein has been part of Montefiore Medical Center, the largest employer in the Bronx.
And now, the legacy of Einstein’s mission of being open to all has expanded with an extraordinary gift of $1 billion by Ruth Gottesman, who served on the faculty for more than 50 years and is chair of the board.
The money, the largest donation ever to a medical school, will make Einstein forever tuition-free. The current tuition of $60,000 a year, over four years, has meant that young doctors, MDs and PhDs, were starting their careers with a quarter million dollars in debt. No more. The lectures and the labs will be free to all students.
Gottesman, who is 93, is the widow of investor Sandy Gottesman. In 1964, he founded the Wall Street firm First Manhattan and teamed up with Warren Buffet and his Berkshire Hathaway. At around the same time, Ruth Gottesman, who holds a doctorate in education, joined Einstein’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center and became a clinical professor of pediatrics, focusing on learning disabilities.
Sandy and Ruth both flourished in their pursuits for decades. He died two years ago at age 96, leaving her a bequest of $1 billion to use as she saw fit. She decided to give the mountain of money to Einstein.
With such an enormous gift would normally come the donor’s name on the door, but she refused and even was reluctant to have her gift be public. Indeed, a stipulation of the gift is that Einstein remain the med school’s name.
And so the promise that Albert Einstein College of Medicine began with is now fully realized. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian; people of all types are welcome as students to learn and now there is no financial barrier. The only criteria is that the applicant be someone who will become a good doctor, a compassionate and learned healer for the betterment of all of humanity.
Ruth Gottesman found the perfect place for the money.
