# Gert Boyle

Source: https://onco.cc/people/gert-boyle/  
OnCo record `gert-boyle` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

In 2014 the Columbia Sportswear chairwoman gave $100 million to OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute, the largest single contribution toward matching Phil and Penny Knight's $500 million challenge.

## Summary

Gert Boyle (1924-2019), who fled Nazi Germany as a child and later ran Columbia Sportswear for decades, gave $100 million in 2014 to the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. OHSU's history records the gift as part of how the $1 billion Knight Cancer Challenge was met in 2015: Phil and Penny Knight's $500 million challenge grant was matched by donations including Boyle's and by $200 million in bonds from the Oregon Legislature. The gift was made anonymously at first and acknowledged later. It helped fund the Knight Cancer Research Building and the institute's early detection programme, and it showed how a challenge grant can pull in other large donors rather than crowd them out.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Tags: hero; donor
- Role: Columbia Sportswear chairwoman whose $100 million helped Oregon meet the Knight Cancer Challenge
- Specialisms: Cancer centre building; Challenge grants

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Boyle
- OHSU Knight Cancer Institute: mission and history: https://www.ohsu.edu/knight-cancer-institute/knight-cancer-institute-mission-and-history

## Connected records

- institutions: [OHSU Knight Cancer Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/ohsu-knight/)
- people: [Brian Druker](https://onco.cc/people/brian-druker/), [Phil Knight](https://onco.cc/people/phil-knight/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/gert-boyle.json