Science Center Slated Near UCI : Philanthropist Beckman Reveals Details of Plan
The western headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences will be located across from the UC Irvine campus in a $20-million facility underwritten by Dr. Arnold Beckman, the Orange County philanthropist and founder of Beckman Instruments said in an interview.
However, a spokesman for the Irvine Co., which is donating the 5.5-acre site near the corner of University Drive and California Avenue, said negotiations with the academy, a 1,200-member scientific honor society, are continuing and “nothing has been signed yet.”
Nonetheless, full-color brochures for the center--a white, horseshoe-shaped complex surrounded by a lake and named after Beckman--have already been printed. Announcement of the national center tentatively had been scheduled for early November.
Chartered by Congress in 1863, the academy’s National Research Council operates on an annual budget of $84 million.
Irvine Mayor David Baker said that if the negotiations are successful, the facility would be “just the tip of the iceberg for the university, the Irvine Co. and the city” in terms of cooperative development.
“Obviously, the City of Irvine is greatly advanced by having an outstanding facility like UCI,” Baker said. “This new facility only enhances the reputation of the city as well. I think it will prove to be a synergistic force in the community, which has the potential of becoming one of the finest high-tech centers in the world.”
On Oct. 5, the University of Illinois announced that Beckman, 85, had donated $40 million for another think tank, a research center for interdisciplinary study of various topics, including artificial intelligence. Beckman received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois, and his doctorate from Caltech in 1928.
Forum for Issues
Both the Irvine and Illinois facilities reflect Beckman’s concern with applied research and the length of time it takes to reach the marketplace.
The Irvine facility, Beckman said, would serve as a meeting place primarily for scientists, although religious people and philosophers might also be involved. Scientists would consider ways to apply their research as well as “ethical concerns, like genetic engineering,” he said, and the facility would provide “forums for these issues.”
“Universities, by and large, do not have the interest or structure to speedily develop basic discoveries and quickly convert them to everyday needs,” Beckman said Wednesday.
The Irvine center is one of a number of major projects being considered by Beckman as part of an ongoing plan to donate his personal fortune, once estimated at $500 million. Founded in 1935, Beckman Instruments was sold in 1981 to the SmithKline pharmaceutical company for $1 billion.
‘Get Rid of Money’
“My job is to get rid of money,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate enough to accumulate more money than Mrs. Beckman and I will need for the rest of our lives. So, what do you do with the surplus?”
In December, 1984, spokesmen for Beckman, the Irvine Co. and UCI announced that a $150-million biotechnology and electronics research center was under consideration and would be located on Irvine Co. land near the intersection of the 405 Freeway and I-5, but that project was apparently dropped.
If the National Academy of Sciences headquarters is located across from the UCI campus, it will be the second such institution in the area. In March, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a scholastic organization, announced that it would move its western regional headquarters from Stanford to the UCI campus.
