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Distinguished
Alumnus
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| Pratt: His school now
bears his name |
| photo:Chris Hildreth |
dmund T. Pratt Jr. B.S.E.E. ’47, philanthropist,
Duke trustee emeritus, and retired chairman and chief executive officer
for Pfizer Inc., is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award,
the highest honor presented to alumni. Distinguished Alumni Award
winners are recognized at Founders’ Day in early October. Established
in 1983 by the Duke Alumni Association, the award recognizes Duke
graduates who have made significant contributions in their own fields,
in service to the university, or for the betterment of humanity.
His gift of $35 million in
1999 to endow the engineering school—now the Edmund T. Pratt
Jr. School of Engineering—is the second-largest in the history
of the university, surpassed only by the original gift of James B.
Duke that transformed Trinity College into the university that bears
his family’s name. “How wonderfully appropriate that on
the very weekend the university celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary
of James B. Duke’s extraordinary philanthropy, Ed Pratt has made
a gift that promises to catapult the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of
Engineering into the ranks of the leading centers of engineering education
and research,” said President Nannerl O. Keohane in announcing
the gift, following action by Duke’s board of trustees renaming
the school. “We are deeply grateful for his vision.”
Pratt came to Duke in 1944 for Navy
officer training under the V-12 program, where he began an accelerated,
year-round study. He chose electrical engineering as his major when
the war ended during his second year at Duke. He completed his third
and final year through the G.I. Bill, graduating magna cum laude.
He then entered the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
of Business, where he earned his M.B.A. in 1949
He joined IBM in 1952 as a salesman and, within a decade,
worked his way to assistant to the executive vice president and then
controller, IBM World Trade Corporation, despite a two-year interruption
serving in the Navy during the Korean War. From 1962 to 1964, he was
in President Kennedy’s administration as assistant secretary
of the Army for financial management, with top civilian responsibility
for Army budgeting and planning, including data processing.
In 1964, he began working for the pharmaceutical company
Pfizer Inc., as corporate
controller. By 1992, when he retired, he had progressed from vice
president of operations of international subsidiaries to president
of international subsidiaries to chairman and CEO. Under his leadership,
Pfizer sales grew from $1 billion to $7 billion and operations expanded
into 140 countries.
Pratt was named a Duke trustee in 1977 and served for
a dozen years. He has also served on the board of the Fuqua School
of Business, the Engineering Development Committee, the Capital Gifts
Committee, and the Leadership Gift Committee. After he retired from
Pfizer, the company established in his honor the Pfizer Inc.-Edmund
T. Pratt Jr. University Professorship. In 1997, Duke named the Pratt
Commons of the Levine Science Research Center in his honor, following
his $1 million gift to the center.
Beyond Duke, Pratt has held leadership positions in the
United Way, the Boys Clubs of America, the Hugh O’Brien Youth
Foundation, and the Girl Scouts. In 1998, he donated $12 million to
Long Island University to fund new academic, computer, and library
facilities, increased recreational space, and other improvements.
Among his other honors, he received Religion in America’s
Charles E. Wilson role-model award and the Boys Clubs of America’s
Herbert Hoover Humanitarian Award.
Pratt and his wife, Nancy, live in New York State, and he has two
sons, Keith and Randolf. |
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