By Anna Kushnir

Harvard’s legendary endowment—over $34 billion—just got a little bigger. Harvard was recently awarded $125 million by a Harvard Business School alumnus, “making it the largest one time gift in the history of the school,” as reported in the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe (and just about every other news carrier in the nation).

This is the second gift to Harvard from Hansjörg Wyss, the chairman of Synthes Inc, a Swiss medical device and implant company. The first gift, totaling $25 million, went to the business school in 2004. This year’s generous (understatement) donation will be used for the development and expansion of a biological engineering institute in Allston. The institute, to be named in honor of Wyss, will focus on “technology in the emerging fields of synthetic biology, new biological materials and devices, as well as biological controls to prompt healing in diseased tissues and organs.”

Not only will this gift help advance cutting edge research at a time of general economic crisis and panic, it will also lead to greater collaboration between engineers and biologists. I haven’t yet noticed serious construction on the site, but once finished, Harvard’s campus in Allston will be a scientific force to be reckoned with.