{"entity":{"id":"herbert-irving","kind":"person","name":"Herbert Irving","aka":["Herbert and Florence Irving"],"tldr":"Herbert and Florence Irving's gifts to Columbia began with $8.5 million in 1987, founded its cancer centre in 1995 and ended with a $700 million bequest in 2017 for cancer research; the total passed $900 million.","summary":"Herbert Irving (1918-2016), a co-founder of the food distributor Sysco, and his wife Florence (1920-2018) were the largest donors in the history of Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian. The cancer centre's own account of the Irving family records a first gift of $8.5 million in 1987, the founding of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1995, and a posthumous gift of $700 million in 2017 to advance research and clinical programmes for the treatment of cancer, spanning cancer genomics, immunology, computational biology, pathology and biomedical engineering. Cumulative Irving giving exceeded $900 million over three decades. The 2017 bequest is among the largest single gifts ever directed to cancer research and funded a wave of recruitment and new laboratories.","asOf":"2026-09-10","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Irving","links":[{"label":"Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center: the Irving family","url":"https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/about-us/irving-family"}],"tags":["hero","donor"],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["cgp","immunotherapy"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["columbia-hicc"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-funding-allocation"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Sysco co-founder whose family gave more than $900 million to Columbia, founding the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center","specialisms":["Cancer centre building","Cancer genomics","Estate philanthropy"],"profiles":[],"papers":[]},"route":"/people/herbert-irving/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"cgp","kind":"technology","name":"Comprehensive genomic profiling","route":"/technologies/cgp/"}],"section":[{"id":"immunotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Immunotherapy","route":"/fronts/immunotherapy/"}],"institution":[{"id":"columbia-hicc","kind":"institution","name":"Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University","route":"/institutions/columbia-hicc/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-funding-allocation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Funding follows fashion, not burden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/"}]}}