Georgetown receives $87 mil endowment

Georgetown University has received an $87 million endowment to support medical research, the university announced Tuesday. It is the largest philanthropic gift in the university's history.

The gift comes from a $1.2 million charitable trust established in the will of the late Harry J. Toulmin in 1965. His widow, businesswoman and philanthropist Virginia Toulmin of Dayton, Ohio, and Sarasota, Fla., managed the trust for the next 45 years. A longtime Georgetown volunteer leader, she died on June 13 at age 84.

The gift will fund the Warwick Evans and Mary Mason Washington Evans Medical Research Endowment, in honor of Harry Toulmin’s grandparents. His grandfather, Warwick Evans, was the first graduate of Georgetown’s School of Medicine in 1852, and went on to become a professor of anatomy there.