# Monroe Dunaway Anderson

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

## TL;DR

He never saw the hospital: his foundation, left $19 million on his death in 1939, matched the State of Texas's $500,000 in 1941 on condition the new cancer hospital be built in Houston and carry his name.

## Summary

Monroe Dunaway Anderson (1873-1939), born in Jackson, Tennessee, made his fortune in the cotton firm Anderson, Clayton and Company in Houston. MD Anderson's own account records that in the mid-1930s he established a charitable foundation in his name with about $300,000, and that the foundation was destined to receive $19,000,000 more after his death in 1939. When the 1941 Texas Legislature authorised the University of Texas to establish a hospital for cancer research and treatment, the Anderson Foundation agreed to match the state's $500,000 appropriation if the hospital was built in Houston and named after Anderson; it was renamed M. D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research of the University of Texas in 1942. The foundation's land and money also seeded the Texas Medical Center around it. The hospital became the largest cancer centre in the United States.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Tags: hero; donor
- Role: Cotton merchant and banker whose foundation's bequest created MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Specialisms: Cancer hospital founding; Estate philanthropy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Dunaway_Anderson
- MD Anderson: who was MD Anderson?: https://www.mdanderson.org/about-md-anderson/facts-history/who-was-md-anderson.html

## Connected records

- institutions: [MD Anderson Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/md-anderson/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/monroe-anderson.json