Boston Blog

Standing ovation for David Koch at MIT

From the NYTimes on yesterday’s dedication of the Koch research building.

Mr. Koch, a billionaire who is perhaps best known for his family’s contributions to conservative causes, got a standing ovation from scientists, Nobel laureates and politicians of various political stripes as he opened the new David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he gave $100 million to help build…

…Mr. Koch is tied with his brother Charles as the fifth wealthiest American in Forbes magazine’s most recent ranking, and came in 45th in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of donors who gave the most in 2010. Stacy Palmer, the editor of the Chronicle, said that Mr. Koch was unusual in the wide range of his philanthropy, which supports cancer research, the arts and the public policy sphere.

His roles do not always fit neatly together.

His gift here means that one of the biggest donors to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, home to some of the top climate scientists in the nation, is an owner of a company that Greenpeace called “a kingpin of climate change denial.”

Koch Industries — which owns oil refineries, pipelines and consumer brands like Dixie cups and Lycra — responded that “it is Greenpeace that is the denier here — denier of any rational and honest dialogue on the underlying scientific debate regarding climate change.”

And while he has become a major financier of cancer research around the country, one of his companies, Georgia-Pacific, which produces formaldehyde, has been trying to convince the government not to list formaldehyde as a human carcinogen. Koch Industries said it would respect and comply with any new governmental regulation.

Comments

Comments are closed.