Georgetown receives trust worth $60 mil.

The trust, in the form of shares in a pharmaceutical company, will support medical center research. The Georgetown University Medical Center announced last week that it will receive a trust worth $60 million, the largest gift in the school's history. The trust was willed to Georgetown by Harry Toulmin -- who owned Central Pharmaceuticals, Inc. when he died in 1965 -- to establish the Mary Mason Washington Evans Medical Research Endowment in honor of his grandparents. Since Toulmin's death, his wife Virginia -- a member of the university's Board of Regents -- has managed the trust. Georgetown officials speculated that she has been reluctant to announce the gift because she did not want to be the center of attention. The trust -- which is in the form of shares in Toulmin's pharmaceutical company -- has grown from approximately $1 million to the $60 million it is worth today. He left the trust to Georgetown because his grandfather Warwick Evans was a member of the medical school's first graduating class in 1852 and a professor of anatomy from 1865 to 1876. Toulmin attended Wittenberg University and the University of Virginia School of Law. While he never studied at Georgetown, Virginia Toulmin noted that he "loved his grandfather, and his grandfather loved Georgetown." Georgetown President Leo O'Donovan said in a written statement that the university was grateful for the "wonderfully generous legacy," adding that the trust would help the medical center "make important contributions to medical research." Officials said that the school does not anticipate actually receiving the money for several years because Virginia Toulmin is only 72 and still in good health. But O'Donovan said the university wanted to make the gift known. "Given the decline in federal support for medical research, we want to underscore the larger need for private donors whose generosity will enable medical research institutions such as Georgetown's to remain in the vanguard of newer and better ways of treating diseases and saving lives," Leo said. Officials said it is too early to say how the money will be used, but said it will likely support research in areas where the medical center has traditionally been strong, including cardiovascular and cancer research. The donation is more than three times as large as the biggest previous gift to Georgetown -- $17 million from an anonymous donor in 1996. It is the 17th-largest private gift to higher education in the United States, the fifth-largest to an academic medical center and the fourth-largest for medical research.