Four years ago, on the Fourth of July, Charlie Munger, the billionaire who is vice chair of Warren Buffet’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, sat down with Lars Bildsten, UCSB’s theoretical physics director. The meeting went well.
Munger offered to donate $65 million for a residence building at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. “It’s the main visiting physics program in the whole damn world,” Munger, 92, said this week in a telephone interview. “It’s a huge feather in the cap of UC Santa Barbara. Physicists are important. If we had lost the war against Hitler, which we very easily could have if he hadn’t attacked Russia, the physicists would have won it for us.”
Hundreds of top scientists, half from out of the country, are accepted every year into the institute’s programs and stay in Santa Barbara. Now they will have a fine place to stay. Early next year, the visiting scholars will reside in the new spectacular building on El Colegio Road.