Education: Thanks to Columbia

Henry Krumb, a Brooklyn boy who studied at Columbia University’s School of Mines, ran short of money in his senior year, 1898. If the school had not paid his tuition with a $200 scholarship, Krumb wrote later, “I would not have been a mining engineer.” As things turned out, Columbia had good reason to congratulate itself on its openhandedness. Henry Krumb grew rich as an internationally famed mining consultant, and in particular as an authority on low-grade copper ore. He sought to repay his debt in many ways, served as a trustee from 1941-47, and gave some $550,000 over the years to the university.

Last week Columbia announced the last payment received from Henry Krumb. E.M. ’98, D.Sc. (hon.) ’51, who died last December: a bequest that may reach $10 million—one of the largest ever made to the university. Of the $6,500,000 or so available now, Krumb directed that about $3,000,000 be given to the university’s first-rate engineering school to help pay for a proposed $22.5 million engineering center. But the wording of his will showed Engineer Krumb’s real love.

“I am proud of the School of Mines,” he wrote. “It is in order that Columbia will never consider abandoning its school that I am making these bequests.” The gifts: $100,000 to be added to a scholarship fund already bearing his name; $500,000 for a Krumb chair of mining; about $3,000,000 to make the School of Mines “one of the most efficient, best-known and largest schools of its kind in the world, with a reputation second to none.”

Among members of the nonmining faculty at Columbia, the huge gifts caused some wondering. The School of Mines has a fine tradition—it was founded in 1864 and is the oldest in the country—but it has only 49 students and nine professors, for years has been merely a department of the School of Engineering. The wonderment is understandable: the chair of mining will be one of the U.S.’s most heavily endowed professorships.