Cecil H. Green, longtime Stanford benefactor, dies at 102

Cecil Howard Green, a co-founder of Texas Instruments and a generous contributor to Stanford, died April 12 in La Jolla after contracting pneumonia. He was 102.

Beginning in 1975, Green and his wife, Ida Mabelle Flansburgh Green, made significant gifts to Stanford that have supported a wide variety of programs. Ida Green died in 1986.

"Mr. and Mrs. Green were remarkable people, extraordinarily generous, very thoughtful of young people and their need for education," said David Weber, the first person to hold the Ida M. Green University Librarianship. "Cecil Green was an exceptional benefactor of the university, and the naming of the main library, as it was then known, in his honor was part of that as well."

The Greens were the lead donors for the construction of the Cecil H. Green Library, which was the centerpiece of Stanford's second comprehensive university fundraising campaign that raised $304 million during the mid-1970s. The Green Library houses the majority of Stanford's humanities and social sciences collections.

"Cecil was important in so many ways at Stanford," said President Emeritus Richard Lyman. When Green made his gift for the library, "that was the best day of my presidency. It was a great boon to the morale of the humanists here," Lyman added.

The Greens also provided the primary gift for construction of the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Earth Sciences Research Building, which was dedicated in 1993. Among their other gifts are the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Professorship in the School of Earth Sciences, the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Fellowship in Geophysics, and the Ida M. Green University Librarianship.

"What was interesting about [Dr. Green] was his wide range of interests and his appreciation of why and how libraries contribute to university teaching and research," said Michael A. Keller, current holder of the Ida M. Green University Librarianship. "He was really proud to have the library and my chair named for him and his wife."

Green began his relationship with Stanford through his longtime friend Joshua Soske, a professor in the School of Mineral Sciences, which would later be renamed the School of Earth Sciences. Through Soske, Green befriended then-president J. E. Wallace Sterling and the then-dean of the school, Charles Park. Green served for 26 years on the school's advisory board and was named an honorary consulting professor to the school in 1982.

"Cecil was a wonderful person who was deeply interested in all kinds of people, students in particular. He loved to meet with them, hear what they were working on, talk with them about their plans and goals, and regale them with stories of working in the oil patch," said Lynn Orr, professor of petroleum engineering and former dean of the School of Earth Sciences. "I know he was an inspiration to them, and his abiding interest in the institutions that have helped students find their place in the world is an inspiration to all of us. We will miss his wise guidance."

Green was born outside Manchester, England, on August 6, 1900, and moved with his family to Canada. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1923-24.

In 1930, he was hired as the chief of a seismographic field crew for newly formed Dallas-based petroleum-prospecting company Geophysical Services Inc. Eleven years later he, J. Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott and H. Bates Peacock purchased the company, which during World War II had branched out into the field of electronics. In 1951, they changed the company's name to Texas Instruments; TI is now a leading designer and supplier of digital signal processing and analog technologies.

The Greens supported a wide range of organizations across the nation and the world, but the focus of their philanthropic efforts was education. Green College at Oxford University was named for Cecil Green, and a dozen universities have recognized his contributions with honorary degrees.

Stanford, which does not confer honorary degrees, named Cecil and Ida Green recipients of its Uncommon Man and Uncommon Woman Awards in 1988. The award recognizes individuals who have rendered extraordinary service to the university, and is given only when a worthy recipient is identified, rather than at proscribed intervals. At the time, Green and his wife (who was awarded posthumously) were the first non-Stanford alumni to receive the award.

A memorial service was scheduled for April 17 in La Jolla.