Truman Dickerson writing at The Boston Globe:
The New England Aquarium received a $9 million philanthropic donation – the largest private gift in its 56-year history – to expand a lab that helps companies be more “environmentally responsible,” aquarium officials announced Wednesday.
The gift was provided by Phil Schiller, an Apple executive, and his wife, Kim Gassett-Schiller – both of whom are prominent philanthropists with standing gifts out to several Massachusetts institutions, including Schiller’s alma mater, Boston College, and Salem State University, where Kim Gassett-Schiller graduated in 1983.
The New England Aquarium is a time-honored institution in the Boston area; I’ve been visiting for as long as I can remember, and I just took my kid there at the end of the summer.1 It’s really a marvelous place.
As to why Phil and his wife chose the aquarium, apparently he worked there as a teen in the 1970s.
“My time working and volunteering at the New England Aquarium as a high school student reinforced a love for the ocean that has stayed with me for decades,” Schiller said in the release.
Now the only remaining important question is whether they will name a penguin “Phil.”
- As some sharp-eyed readers have noticed, the aquarium in my recent Galactic Cold War short story “Tapper’s Day Off” was inspired by the aquarium. ↩
