The University of Southern California has received an unrestricted $200 million gift to support its science, social science, and humanities teaching and research, it announced today.

USC is to add the names of donors Dana and David Dornsife to its College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The Dornsifes have previously bankrolled a neuroscience imaging centre at the university before making this donation, the largest in the institution’s history.

David Dornsife heads steel company Herrick Corporation while his wife founded the Lazarex Cancer Foundation and is also a director of the bio-tech company Epeius.

The LA Times sets all this in context:

The single largest gift to a US college or university was the $600-million pledge to Caltech in 2001 from Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore, his wife Betty, and their foundation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. More than 20 schools have received individual donations of at least $200 million over the years.