San Diego real estate developer and philanthropist Conrad T. Prebys has died at the age of 82, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Born in South Bend, Indiana, Prebys worked in a steel mill and owned a pizzeria before moving to San Diego in his early thirties and, over the next forty years, building a real estate empire that included ninety properties and nearly eight thousand rental units. His philanthropic interests ranged from the performing arts and public television, to health care and medical research, to the San Diego Zoo, one of his first and longest-running causes. Prebys' recent philanthropy included a gift of $100 million in 2015 to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in support of the institute's ten-year plan to accelerate the delivery of innovative treatments that significantly improve human health; a gift of $25 million to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 2014 in support of pioneering research on a range of diseases; a gift of $45 million in 2011 to Scripps Health toward construction of a cardiology center; and gifts of $20 million each to San Diego State University (2014) and Indiana University (2015) to fund scholarships and/or endow faculty positions.

Barry Edelstein, artistic director for the Old Globe theater in Balboa Park, told the Union-Tribune that Prebys, who succumbed to cancer, often wanted to dig deeper into the work of the institutions that he supported. "He wanted to know, why did you do it that way? Why did you make that choice? He had a hungry, curious mind."

"Conrad gave me his special rule for how he went about deciding what to support," said Mark Stuart, president of the San Diego Zoo Foundation. "He told me once, 'If a proposal makes me want to jump up and down, I'm all in.'"