Ben E. May

Ben E. May (1889–1972) was a Mobile, Alabama, businessman and philanthropist who helped found the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago and established the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. The Ben May Library—Mobile's central public library—is named in his honor.

Early life

At the age of fifteen, May worked in a saw mill, where he acquired the expertise with which he would eventually make his fortune. After only a year of formal higher education at the Georgia Institute of Technology, May moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he quickly recognized the value of the region's timber holdings and began acquiring previously-harvested properties with the idea of reforesting them.^[1]

Business career

May’s fortune was made during World War I, when he supplied England with much-needed timber for the nation's war effort. May then re-invested that fortune in land in southwest Alabama, Florida, and California. In 1940, he founded and became president of the Gulf Lumber Company in Mobile, and he served as vice-president of Blackwell Nurseries, director of the First National Bank of Mobile, and director of Morrison’s Cafeteria.^[2]

Philanthropy

May was motivated mainly by the desire to help physicians and scientists eradicate disease. He supported the Weizmann Institute; funded the research of Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin; aided the investigations of Paul Dudley White, renowned cardiologist affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts; and helped found a cancer research institute led by Charles B. Huggins, director of oncology research at the University of Chicago. May was also instrumental in establishing the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham.^[3][4]

The Ben May Charitable Trust donated $1 million to help renovate the main library in downtown Mobile, and the library was renamed the Ben May Public Library in his honor on March 23, 2004.^[5]

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