Amar Bose donates majority of Bose Corporation shares to MIT, says thanks for the education
posted May 2nd 2011 5:48AM
If you haven’t heard of Dr. Amar Bose directly, you’ve surely heard of his eponymous audio equipment company. Late last week, the 81-year old founder and chairman of Bose Corporation announced that he’s donating the majority of shares in the privately held company to his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A member of that college’s graduating class of 1951 and its electrical engineering faculty all the way until 2001, Bose felt compelled to give something back and he’s opted for the most grandiose of gestures. MIT won’t be able to sell its shares in Bose Corp. nor have any say in the way it is run, but it’ll receive dividends as and when they’re paid out, which will then be reinvested in its research and education programs. In making this perpetual endowment public, Amar Bose took the time to credit Professors Y. W. Lee, Norbert Wiener and Jerome Wiesner as his mentors — in the image above, you can see him pictured with Lee (left) and Wiener (right) back in 1955. Chalkboards, that’s where it all began.