Edward Harkness

From Freepedia

Edward Stephen Harkness (1874 - 1940) was an American philanthropist. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, one of three children born to Anna Richardson and her husband Stephen V. Harkness, a harnessmaker who invested with John D. Rockefeller and became the second-largest shareholder in Standard Oil. (His father died in 1888.) Harkness attended St. Paul's School and Yale University, Class of 1897. After graduating, Edward Harkness married Mary Stillmann, whose family had also been associated with the Rockefellers.

His elder brother Charles W. Harkness died in 1916, and in 1917 Anna Harkness gave $3,000,000 to Yale University to build Harkness Quadrangle in his memory. In 1918 Anna Harkness established the Commonwealth Fund by a initial gift of $10,000,000, and Edward Harkness was made its president.

St. Salvator's Hall at the University of St Andrews, Butler Library at Columbia University as well as most of the undergraduate dorms at Harvard University and Yale University were built through his philanthropy. He also had an incredible impact on several New England boarding schools, donating the School House at St. Paul's and introducing the Harkness table method of learning, now the staple of an education at both Phillips Exeter Academy and St. Paul's.