T.H. Chan

Born and raised in the province of Guangdong, China, Chan moved to British Hong Kong in the 1940s because of the Chinese Civil War. He took an entry-level job in a bank and eventually built a successful real estate business. According to his son Gerald, he used to loan money to his friends to pay for their children's school fees. His wife, Tan Chingfen, was a nurse who, in the 1950s, gave cholera vaccinations to the neighbourhood children in the family kitchen.

After Gerald got a fellowship for his doctoral studies at Harvard, Chan was proud of his son, but disturbed that Gerald was taking the place of someone who could not pay. He told a friend, "We have the means to pay tuition. Why is Gerald taking the scholarship away from someone else?"

In 2014, his sons Ronnie and Gerald donated $350 million to Harvard University, which named the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health after him. Harvard officials said the money would be used in four areas: pandemics, including obesity, cancer, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; harmful environments, including pollution and violence; poverty and humanitarian crises; and failing health systems.

Also in 2014, Ronnie Chan and his wife Barbara donated $20 million to the University of Southern California in honor of T.H. Chan's widow to name and endow the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.