Phil Knight, Ex-Nike Chief, and His Wife Pledge $2 Billion to Oregon Cancer Center

U.S.|Phil Knight, Ex-Nike Chief, and His Wife Pledge $2 Billion to Oregon Cancer Center

Phil Knight, a co-founder of Nike, and his wife, Penny Knight, will give $2 billion to the cancer research center at Oregon Health & Science University, a gift the institution billed as the largest single donation to a university in the United States.

The university said that the donation would help it expand and accelerate diagnostic capabilities, ensure access to innovative clinical trials and simplify the experience for patients and families. Its main campus is in Portland, Ore.

In 2008, the university named its cancer institute after the Knights after receiving a $100 million gift from them. And in 2013, the couple, who live in Oregon, pledged an additional $500 million to the university if it could match the sum in two years as part of a cancer challenge, which it did.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the transformational potential of this work for humanity,” the couple said in a statement provided by the university.

Mr. Knight, 87, who is synonymous with the Nike swoosh logo, stepped down as president and chief executive of the Oregon-based sneaker and athletic wear giant in 2004. In 2016, he retired as the company’s chairman.

Dr. Brian Druker, the cancer institute’s chairman of leukemia research, said in a statement on Thursday that the couple’s previous donations had helped establish a large-scale early cancer detection program. The cancer challenge also spurred the development of numerous blood tests to detect cancer in its early stages and empowered the center to lead the way in targeted therapies and precision medicine, he said.

“Penny and Phil Knight have always challenged us to do what no one else is doing,” Dr. Druker said. “It can seem impossible to navigate the health care system after being diagnosed with cancer. We’re going to change that. We have revolutionized the way we detect and treat cancer.”

Worth an estimated $35.4 billion, according to Forbes, Mr. Knight is widely known for his philanthropy, especially to his alma maters.

At the University of Oregon, where he ran track, he is the most famous booster, and several buildings carry his family’s name. There is the Knight Library, and the university’s basketball arena is named after Phil and Penny Knight’s son, Matthew, who died in a scuba diving accident in 2004.

In 2016, Mr. Knight pledged $400 million to Stanford University, where he graduated from business school, to recruit graduate students from around the globe to address society’s most intractable problems, including poverty and climate change.

Ten-figure donations to U.S. higher learning and medical research institutions are not uncharted.

In 2018, Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former mayor of New York City, pledged $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to create a fund that would help low- and moderate-income students attend without having to worry about the cost.

And in 2024, the 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for all students going forward.