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Comment by antonius | Hacker News Reader

With all of the philanthropy that Bill and his wife are doing, my gut feeling is that centuries from now, Bill will go down as being remembered more so for his contributions to humanity than everything he did in his professional career. Regardless, a great human being.

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Perhaps. Here's a quiz: Name a big Philanthropist from 300 years ago. From 150 years ago. From 50 years ago...

50 years: Rockafeller. 100 years: Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt. 150 years: Alfred Nobel. 300 years: John Harvard.

What do I win?

The thing is, I don't remember those people as philanthropists...

You didn't watch enough PBS as a child then ;)

What do you remember Alfred Nobel as? John Harvard?

You could make a case for the industrialists, but I'd give good money people can name "Rockafeller Center" before they can name "Standard Oil".

I didn't watch PBS since I'm not American :(

I read about Alfred Nobel in a children's encyclopaedia in primary school; I mostly remember him as the inventor of dynamite who got a crisis of conscience and thus created the Nobel prizes (I didn't think of those as philanthropy, and I'm not sure if the "crisis of conscience" part is factually accurate).

John Harvard, purely name association with Harvard University. I guess I should check his Wikipedia page out.

Edit: It's actually Harvard College. Shows how much I know.

The name association with Harvard is remembering him as a philanthropist. The name of the college was changed because of a generous gift upon his death.

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