After battling prostate cancer for 20 years, David Koch told a reporter following the 2012 Republican convention that he was thinking about what he would someday leave behind.
"I like to engage where my part makes a difference," he told The Weekly Standard. "I have a point of view. When I pass on, I want people to say he did a lot of good things, he made a real difference, he saved a lot of lives in cancer research."
David Koch donated $100 million in 2007 to create the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also gave millions of dollars to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, the M.D. Anderson Cancer in Houston and other institutions.
Editor's Note: David Koch was a member of the WGBH Board of Trustees from 1997-2006 and 2007-2016. He was also a founding member of the NOVA Science Visiting Council.
