General Sylvanus Thayer’s 1860s donation of $70,000 for a Thayer School of Architecture and Civil Engineering (1871) would be worth about $61.7 million today, after five percent annual compounding; Edward Tuck’s 1899-1929 donations for the Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance (1900) would be worth about $121.4 million. It is harder to estimate how much the right to name the Dartmouth Medical School would be worth, since Dartmouth itself funded most of the cost of starting the institution in 1797 and has failed ever since to take advantage of the opportunity to name it for a benefactor. But now we know: the opportunity to name the Medical School is probably worth $150 million, which is the amount Dartmouth now seeks for that right, according to a Development Office brochure.

One wonders whether the school will be called the “[Name] Medical School” or shift to the “[Name] School of Medicine at Dartmouth College” to match the other two professional schools.