Stony Brook University, a public school on Long Island, received a donation of $500 million on Thursday from a foundation formed by an alumnus and a former faculty member, making it the recipient of one of the largest gifts to a university in American history. The school said it hopes the gift will spur other donations that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. Gifts of that size are rare for universities, and especially so for public institutions like Stony Brook, which is one of the flagship schools of the State University of New York. The donation plus the state matching funds amount to nearly twice the amount of Stony Brook’s current endowment of $370 million, the university president, Maurie McInnis, said in an interview. The donation was made by the Simons Foundation, which was formed in 1994 by Jim Simons, a former Stony Brook math professor who later made billions as a hedge fund manager, and his wife Marilyn Simons, who received her bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Stony Brook.

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Persons: Maurie McInnis, Jim Simons, Marilyn Simons Organizations: Stony Brook University, New York State, State University of New, Simons Foundation, Brook Locations: Long, Stony, State University of New York, Stony Brook