The New York Times records the death of philanthropist, Mortimer D.Sackler:
A native New Yorker, he began his medical education in Scotland because, he said, quotas kept him, as a Jew, from being admitted to medical school in New York. He lived in Europe since the 1970s, and his philanthropy — often along with that of his older brother, Arthur, and his younger brother, Raymond — encompassed both Britain and the Continent.
He was a major donor to Oxford University, Edinburgh University, Glasgow University, the Tate Gallery in London, the Royal College of Art, the Louvre, the Jewish Museum in Berlin and Salzburg University, among other institutions.
In New York, the Sackler brothers were probably best known for the Sackler wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses the Temple of Dendur and whose construction they helped finance. Through his foundation, Mortimer Sackler financed the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim, and was a major contributor to the American Museum of Natural History.
The Sackler brothers were all doctors, and all businessmen as well. In 1952, while the three were working at the Creedmoor state psychiatric hospital, Arthur financed the purchase of a small drug manufacturer based in Greenwich Village, the Purdue Frederick Company, which Mortimer and Raymond Sackler ran as co-chairmen and which later became Purdue Pharma, now based in Stamford, Conn. (The brothers later established several drug companies in other countries.)
Mortimer D. Sackler, Arts Patron, Dies at 93 (New York Times)
