CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 8 (UPI) -- A Swiss entrepreneur has promised Harvard University the largest gift in its history for a biological engineering institute in Boston.
The university announced the $125 million pledge from Hansjorg Wyss Tuesday, the Boston Globe reported.
Wyss, a graduate of Harvard Business School, headed Synthes, a medical device manufacturer, for 30 years. He is on Forbes magazine's list of billionaires.
The university plans to build the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering on the Boston side of the Charles River, in a new science complex near the Harvard Medical School.
University officials said that the institute is another move away from Harvard's past practice of operating its professional schools as independent agencies. The goal is to bring together scientists from both sides of the river -- the academics in Cambridge and professionals in Boston.
"Things have changed, with unification of sciences -- biological and physical -- with engineering," said Donald Ingber, a bioengineering professor who will head the institute. "We're really hitting that tipping point where we're understanding enough about how nature builds and controls that we think we could come up with entirely new engineering principles that could revolutionize medicine and industrial applications."
