Dr. Amar Bose ’51, Bose Corporation’s Founder, has given to MIT the majority of the stock of Bose Corporation in the form of non-voting shares.
MIT will receive annual cash dividends on those shares when dividends are paid by Bose Corporation; those cash dividends will be used by MIT to sustain and advance MIT’s education and research mission.
Under the terms of the gift, MIT cannot sell its Bose shares and will not participate in the management or governance of the company. Bose Corporation will remain a private and independent company, and operate as it always has, with no change in strategy or leadership. Dr. Bose will remain Bose Corporation’s Chairman and Technical Director.
Dr. Bose received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and PhD from MIT, all in electrical engineering. He was asked to join the faculty in 1956, and accepted with the intention of teaching for no more than two years. He continued as a member of the MIT faculty until 2001, making important contributions to the Institute’s teaching of undergraduate electrical engineering.
In 1964, Dr. Bose founded Bose Corporation. From its inception, the company has remained privately owned, with a focus on long-term research. Learn about the company here.
In expressing gratitude for this gift, MIT President Susan Hockfield remarked not only on Dr. Bose’s generosity, but also on his humility. “Amar Bose gives us a great gift today, but he also serves as a superb example for MIT graduates who yearn to cut their own path. Dr. Bose set the highest teaching standards, for which he is still admired and loved by his faculty colleagues and the many students he taught. His insatiable curiosity propelled remarkable research, both at MIT and within the company he founded. Dr. Bose has always been more concerned about the next two decades than about the next two quarters.”
“Dr. Bose,” Hockfield continued, “has asked us not to shine too bright a spotlight on him today. So to honor that wish, let us simply celebrate Dr. Bose’s profound belief in the transformative power of an MIT education.”
In a letter to Bose Corporation employees, Dr. Bose paid tribute to his mentors at MIT: Professors Y. W. Lee, Norbert Wiener and Jerome Wiesner. He explained that the gift represents his long-held desire to support MIT education, and reaffirmed the company’s mission to play for the long run.
“We will continue,” Dr. Bose wrote to his employees, “to remain true to the principles upon which our company was founded.”
democracylater on June 24th, 2020 at 17:51 UTC »
Amar Bose was a really cool guy. He once was giving a speech and quoted Albert Schweitzer “what is bad is not that man lives and dies. What is bad is what dies within man while he lives. And perhaps one of the most important things that dies within man while he lives is his imagination. The thing that keeps you going and keeps you creative is to never lose your imagination. To dream of things that are better and how to reach those things.” You can definitely see the man never lost his imagination serving as a giant middle finger to the rest of the audio industry for about 50 years lol. Bose Corp has actually invented a bunch of random stuff aside from sound: Car suspensions, seats for truck drivers, induction cooking systems, and echolocation walking sticks. Amar Bose spent boatloads of cash trying to make a noise cancelling headphone in the 1980s. Everyone thought it was too much work and a fruitless effort. But hey, look what happened.
they_have_bagels on June 24th, 2020 at 16:09 UTC »
The important thing is that they are non-voting shares. They get the monetary proceeds, but actual decision making stays with other shareholders.
I met Dr Bose a few times while I was working there. He was always so full of passion and excited to see people learning, and was a huge proponent of education. It makes total sense that he'd do what he did.
starstarstar42 on June 24th, 2020 at 15:51 UTC »
The massive endowments of big name universities such as Harvard, Yale, etc., comes in large part from accomplished alumni leaving stocks, cash, trademarks, companies, even entire estates and fortunes to them in their wills.