Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has announced a $10 million bequest from the estate of Robert and Dorothy Rector to support the construction of a new science center to advance the connectivity of the sciences in undergraduate education.

The unrestricted gift is the initial disbursement of what Dickinson officials are calling the "largest outright gift" in the school's history. The total gift from the Rectors' estate has yet to be announced.

Praising the couple as "consistently generous donors," college president William G. Druden said the gift gives Dickinson "the critical resources to move aggressively on one of its highest strategic priorities for the benefit of generations of future students — undergraduate science education in a global context." What is especially gratifying, Druden added, is that the Rectors, both of whom engaged in a lifetime in the health sciences profession, "complement the ambition and achievement of our founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush, America's first chemistry professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a physician and 'the father of American psychiatry.'"

After receiving his medical degree from Dickinson in 1945, Robert Rector joined the U.S. Navy and served at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital; the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati; the Veterans Administration Hospital in Saginaw, Michigan; and as general surgeon aboard the U.S.S. Valley Forge. Dorothy Rector, a Philadelphia native, was a graduate of Germantown Hospital's nursing program. In 1961, the couple moved to Chambersburg, where Dr. Rector was on staff at the local hospital and his wife served as his assistant and business manager.