Robert Purcell

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Robert W. Purcell (1912 - 1991) was an American businessman and philanthropist.

Purcell was born in Watertown, New York in 1912. He graduated from Cornell University in 1932, being elected during his last year into the Sphinx Head Society. Purcell then graduated from the Cornell Law School in 1935.

He joined the New York City law firm of White & Case after graduating from Law School. He later became counsel and vice chairman of the Allegheny Corporation and its railroads: the Chesapeake & Ohio, and the Nickel Plate. In the mid-1950s he became president and chairman of Investors Diversified Services.

From 1955 to 1979, he served as a financial advisor to Rockefeller Family and Associates. He owned Portillo, an international ski resort in Chile, where the 1966 World Championships were held. He served on the Cornell Board of Trustees from 1959 to 1981, and as chairman during an era of great student unrest from 1968 to 1978.

During his tenure as Chair, two different Presidents, James Perkins and Dale Corson, resigned. However, his tenure as Chair also marked expanded minority enrollment, the founding of the Africana Studies and Research Center, and adding five student members to the Board of Trustees.

Purcell also served on a number of corporate boards and had a noted role in Bendix Corporation's 1982 attempt to acquire Martin Marietta. ^[1]

His gifts to Cornell totaled more than $17 million, many of them given anonymously. In 1982, the Board of Trustees named the student union on the Cornell North Campus after him in recognition of his long-standing interest in students, and researchers at Cornell named an improved strain of winter wheat for him. He died in 1991 at the age of 79.^[2]