U. A. Whitaker

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Uncas A. Whitaker (1900-1975) was born in Kansas and raised in Missouri. He was a mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, lawyer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He received a mechanical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an electrical engineering degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology and a law degree from the McKinley School of Law. At the age of 41, he founded Aircraft-Marine Products, AMP Inc., in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania which produced electrical connectors removing the need for soldering.

When Whitaker died in 1975, he left part of his fortune for a foundation to improve people's lives primarily by supporting Biomedical engineering research and education. Money provided for the Whitaker Foundation by Whitaker and his wife, Helen Whitaker, totaled $120 million. In 1994, the foundation was the sixty-first largest foundation in the United States with assets of $340 million and annual expenditures of $26 million.