Scientist, Industrialist, and Scripps Philanthropist Cecil
H. Green Dies at 102
Cecil H. Green, a co-founder of Texas Instruments, an international
leader in industry and education, and one of the nation's
most visionary philanthropists who contributed to Scripps
Research Foundation—which later became The Scripps Research
Institute (TSRI)—passed away on April 12, 2003 at Scripps
Green Hospital in La Jolla at the age of 102. He is remembered
as a man of adventurous and intelligent compassion, keen intellect,
and gentle good humor who has left an indelible mark on the
nation's scientific, biomedical, and educational institutions.
Born in Manchester, England, August 6, 1900, Green was educated
in the public schools of Vancouver, BC, attended the University
of British Columbia, and in 1924 earned his Master of Science
degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT). He married Ida Mabelle Flansburgh in
1926, and the two began the extraordinary explorations that
took them from the small towns of Oklahoma to Central America,
South America, and Asia. The Greens had no children.
Cecil Green worked on the steam turbine generator at General
Electric, on gaseous tube devices at Raytheon and in production
engineering at the Federal Telegraph Co. (later IT&T). He
joined the oil exploration company Geophysical Service Inc.
(GSI) in Dallas, Texas, and he and Ida spent the next 15 years
in hard fieldwork, exploring sub-surface structures in and
around Texas for those that might contain oil and gas, work
known as "doodlebugging." With three partners, they purchased
GSI in 1941, which eventually became Texas Instruments, a
world leader in microelectronics, including the first commercial
silicon transistor and the first integrated circuit.
When the Greens discovered La Jolla, the area was just developing
as a center of science and medicine. The University of California
had opened a campus on Torrey Pines Mesa, Jonas Salk had selected
a nearby site for his new scientific institute, and Edmund
Keeney was leading Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation
(SCRF), whose research arm later became TSRI, toward distinction
in biomedical research.
Fascinated by the applications of industrial knowledge to
the field of medicine, particularly radiology and diagnostic
imagery, Green had long conversations with Scripps Clinic's
leading radiologists and made several gifts to expand the
clinic's capabilities in that area. In 1970, the Greens established
the Cecil and Ida Green Investigatorship in The Research Institute
of Scripps Clinic, and shortly afterward the couple made gifts
that helped successfully construct a hospital on the campus.
In recognition, the hospital was named the Cecil H. and Ida
M. Green Hospital, known today as Scripps Green Hospital.
Upon Ida Green's death from cancer in 1986, SCRF received
its largest bequest up to that time and, in honor of the bequest,
established the Ida M. Green Cancer Center, now known as the
Ida M. and Cecil H. Green Cancer Center at Scripps Clinic.
The Greens imaginatively shared their wealth to fund academic
buildings, health care centers, libraries and other civic
buildings, professorships, fellowships, scholarships and arts
and cultural organizations throughout the United States, England,
Canada and Australia.
Mr. and Mrs. Green were universally honored in their lifetimes.
In 1978, the National Academy of Sciences honored them with
an international tribute attended by 30 presidents and chancellors
of various institutions. Some 25 colleges and universities,
hospitals, museums and schools have benefited from gifts the
Greens made for trusteeships, program development, endowments,
facilities, scientific equipment and programs to advance basic
research and education on a global scale—including 15
major university or hospital facilities and 20 fully-endowed
professorships. The Greens also funded an endowed Master Teacher
chair held by a first grade teacher, fellowships to encourage
women in science and engineering, life-saving medical equipment,
a geophysical and oceanographic research vessel, arts objects,
and a global system of earthquake detectors.
Cecil Green held more than a dozen honorary degrees, including
a Doctor of Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines
and a Doctor of Science from Oxford University. On May 22,
1991, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed him an honorary
Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,
and in 1994 he was named "Philanthropist of the Year" by the
National Association of Fund Raising Executives for the exceptional
support he and Ida had given the nation's leading institutions,
among them MIT, Stanford, and the University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center.
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Cecil H. Green co-founded Texas Instruments.
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