User:LibertarianLuvr/David-Koch

David Hamilton Koch (pronounced "coke", born May 3, 1940) is an American businessman, philanthropist, political activist and chemical engineer. He is a co-owner, (with older brother Charles), and an executive vice president of Koch Industries, a conglomerate that is the second largest privately held company in the U.S. Koch is the second richest resident of New York City, as of 2010. He is a major patron of the arts and funder of conservative and libertarian political causes.

Early life and education
Born in Wichita, Kansas, Koch is one of four sons of petroleum industry innovator Fred C. Koch. He attended the Deerfield Academy prep school in Massachusetts, graduating in 1959. He went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning both a bachelor's (1962) and a master's degree (1963) in chemical engineering.

He established an MIT record in basketball by scoring an average of 21 points per game over three years, and held MIT's single-game scoring record of 41 points, from 1962 when he was captain of the team, until it was broken in early 2009 by Jimmy Bartolotta.

Political career
Koch was the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in the 1980 presidential election, sharing the party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark-Koch ticket received 921,128 votes (1.06% of the total nationwide), a Libertarian Party national ticket's best showing ever.

Since 1984, Koch has been a Republican.

Advocacy
Koch founded the Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1984, a group that advocated for lower taxes and less regulation of business. He presently funds Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group that has close ties to the U.S. Tea Party movement and that opposes much of U.S. President Barack Obama's policies and legislative agenda.

Koch currently serves on the boards of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. His brother, Charles Koch, has also been active in organizing and funding foundations and think-tanks such as the Cato Institute.

In August 2010, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker wrote an article about the political spending of David and Charles Koch. The article said that the Koch brothers are major funders of the U.S. Tea Party movement, giving money to organizations disabling mitigation of global warming legislation, and underwriting a vast network of foundations, think tanks, and groups mounting opposition campaigns against Obama Administration policies, ranging from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program. The editorial cites Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity as saying, "The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times." Koch has responded by calling the article "an absolute slander and a highly inaccurate and dishonest attack on the two of us and our great company, Koch Industries".

Philanthropy
Since 2000, David Koch has pledged and/or donated more than $600 million to the arts, education and medical research. .

Arts
In July 2008, David Koch pledged $100 million over 10 years to renovate the New York State Theater in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts(now called the David H. Koch Theater), and has pledged $10 million to renovate the outdoor fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. .

Koch has been a trustee of the American Ballet Theater for 25 years and has contributed more than $6 million to the theater. 

Medical Research
A prostate cancer survivor,, Koch sits on the Board of Directors of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and has contributed $41 million to the Foundation, including $5 million to a collaborative project in the field of nanotechnology. Koch is the is the eponym of the David H. Koch Chair of the Prostate Cancer foundation, a position currently held by Dr. Jonathan Simons.

In 2007, he contributed $100 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help fund the construction of a new 350000 sqft research and technology facility to serve as the home of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He also contributed $20 million to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, $30 million to the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York, $25 million to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houstonto establish the David Koch Center for Applied Research in Genitourinary Cancers , $15 million to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Centerand $25 million to The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.

Education
David Koch contributed $7 million to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) show Nova,, and is a contributer to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., including a $20 million gift to the American Museum of Natural History, creating the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing and a contribution of $15 million to the National Museum of Natural History to create the new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, which opened on the museum's 100th anniversary of its location on the National Mall on March 17, 2010.

David Koch also financed the construction of Deerfield Academy's $68 million state-of-the-art Koch Center for mathematics, science and technology.and was named the first and only Lifetime Trustee. .

Koch gave $10 million to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he was honored with the Double Helix Medal for Corporate Leadership for supporting research that, “improves the health of people everywhere.”.

David Koch was a national sponsor of The Bill of Rights Institute's 2009-2010 high school essay contest, "Being an American". and also gave $350,000 to the MIT Athletic Department. .