Gifts to UCSD Will Fund Cancer Research Chair, Expand Scripps

University of California regents accepted more than $2 million in gifts to aid UC San Diego Friday.

One will endow a cancer research chair at the medical school and the other will fund about a quarter of the cost of a building project at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Meeting at the UC Santa Cruz campus, regents accepted $250,000 to establish the Evelyn and Edwin Tasch Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

Candidates for the new position are being sought, a UCSD spokeswoman said.

Evelyn Tasch of Rancho Santa Fe donated the money in memory of her late husband, a retired New York businessman who died last year of lung cancer.

He had been a patient at the UCSD Cancer Center.

The other gift is $1.95 million from a foundation established by Texas Instruments founder Cecil H. Green of Dallas and La Jolla.

The gift will go toward the $7.3-million cost of an addition to the existing geophysics building at Scripps, and will be called the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Geophysical Laboratory.

The Cecil and Ida Green Foundation for Earth Sciences has given previous gifts to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

These include an international seismic network operated by Scripps; a geophysical observatory at Pinon Flat, Calif.; and a scholarship program that supports visiting scientists.