Henry Rowan Inductotherm acquisition and Rowan University endowment

MIT alumnus Henry Rowan acquired Inductotherm and Lepel — the two or three dominant induction-melting furnace builders — and consolidated near-monopoly. Wanting a university named for him, he was rebuffed by MIT and NJIT (the latter declining at $100–200M) before endowing what became Rowan University in New Jersey.

There's one guy, a graduate of MIT, who basically bought Inductotherm and Lepel — there were only two or three big induction melting furnace companies in the world. He ended up acquiring them all, getting sort of a monopoly. His name was Henry Rowan. He wanted to have a university named after him, but he didn't have enough money to convince MIT to change their name. He went to New Jersey Institute of Technology and they wouldn't do it for $100 million, or $200 million. So he went to another school in New Jersey — he was out of somewhere just north of Philly — and he convinced this other school to take his money. I can't remember what its name was before, but it's now Rowan Institute of Technology. Because he gave them a couple hundred million dollars.