The University recently lost two of its most generous donors: H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest ’58LAW, ’09HON, who died at age eighty-eight on August 5; and Florence Irving ’13HON, who died at ninety-eight on July 25.
Gerry Lenfest, a University Trustee from 2001 to 2013, supported a wide variety of Columbia programs and was “a true colleague in every major undertaking of the University over the last two decades,” says President Lee C. Bollinger. Together with his wife, Marguerite, Lenfest established the Distinguished Columbia Faculty Awards to honor exceptional teaching in the arts and sciences; he created a matching-gift program that endowed twenty-five faculty chairs in the arts and sciences; he helped to fund the construction of the Lenfest Center for the Arts in Manhattanville; and he made major gifts to Columbia’s Earth Institute, its law school, and its medical center.
Florence Irving, along with her late husband, Herbert ’09HON, was a benefactor of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which was named in the couple’s honor in 2016. CUIMC, Columbia’s shared medical campus with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is home to numerous buildings, institutes, and programs that have received crucial support from the Irvings, among them the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, and the Irving Scholars Program.
