Wilmer to receive $20 million from T. Boone Pickens

Wilmer Eye Institute will receive $20 million from businessman T. Boone Pickens. The gift is included in his estate and will create an endowment to fund a T. Boone Pickens Scholars program supporting clinician-scientists with promising, innovative ideas for new research avenues.

“What this gift will do is allow us to scour the globe, not just the United States, to find the best and brightest young minds, bring them here as Boone Pickens Scholars, [and] invest in them the resources that will allow them to explore that brilliant idea that, if it pans out, is going to be a game changer,” said Peter McDonnell, the William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins and director of the institute.

When complete, the Pickens bequest will bring Pickens’ support of Wilmer to more than $28 million. He established the Boone Pickens Professorship in Ophthalmology in 2005 and later contributed $6 million to construction of the institute’s Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building, which opened in 2009.

“(This new gift is) going to help people for the next 100 years,” Pickens said. “They’re going to come up with some good ideas that will be developed and we will have great results from that.”