Biography | Andrew Grove — The Engineering School That Took His Name After a $26 Million Gift

People treat a named professional school as if the letters on the lintel were always there.

On this campus they date to a telephone call and a check.

On 26 October 2005, City College president Gregory H. Williams announced that Andrew S. Grove, class of 1960, was giving the college $26 million.

The New York Times reported the news the next morning and called it the largest gift City College had ever received, and the largest single cash gift to the City University of New York.

Five million dollars would arrive by the end of that year. The rest was scheduled over decades.

CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein said he would recommend that the trustees rename the School of Engineering the Grove School of Engineering.

The building that now carries the school is Steinman Hall, finished in 1962 on the north end of campus and named for the bridge engineer David Barnard Steinman, class of 1906.

Grove had not studied inside it. He had already graduated when the new hall opened.

He had, in January 1957, walked into the admissions office of a free public college speaking little English.

In the gift statement he called City College the bookends of his professional life, from that January day to a chance meeting, weeks before the announcement, with David L.V. Bauer, who had won the Intel Science Talent Search and then enrolled here.

The money was barred from new construction. It was meant for labs, faculty, and students who still arrived in a hurry.

Grove died in Los Altos, California, on 21 March 2016. The school on this lot kept the name.

A visitor who wants the rooms he actually sat in should walk toward Compton Hall and Goethals Hall, not only toward the letters over this door.

Photo: Caballero1967, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.