1999, gives “primarily to health care, educational, and domestic humanitar- ian charities.” After searching all
evening, I note that the extant public information on Howard, who’s made a parallel fortune in oil and gas exploration and production, will not fill a wine glass. Perhaps that’s just as he wants it.
9. Ted Waitt, 53 LA JOLLA, H OLLYWOOD HILLS, BEVERLY HILLS
Estimated net worth: $720 million Major donations: Salk Institute for Biologi- cal Studies in 2008, 2009, 2010: $29 million Waitt Institute of Dis- covery in 2006 and 2007: $6.9 million Rady’s Children Hospital in 2000: $3 million Last December, Waitt
was appointed chair- man of the board at
West senior center at Fourth and Beech. The Wests made their fortune in telemarketing.
Salk, succeeding Irwin Jacobs. Waitt cofounded Gateway, famous for its opening gambit — sell- ing personal computers via mail order and ship- ping them in cardboard boxes, printed with faux Holstein cowhide. A very lucky duck, indeed, he
sold his business in 2007 for $710 million, just before the Great Reces- sion devalued the worth of nearly every Ameri- can company. The Waitt Foun-
dation has bankrolled researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies to study imaging techniques for the treat- ment of aging, cancer, and genetic and infec- tious diseases. In 2015 alone, he and his Salk brethren raised $330 million for the Institute. Waitt, once the apothe- osis of the ponytailed
HEALTH AND BEAUTY
capitalist, today devotes the majority of his time to ocean conservation. The Waitt home in La Jolla, down the street from Salk, was placed on the market in 2015 for $22.9 million.
10. Andrew Viterbi, 82 RANCHO SANTA FE
Estimated net worth: $440 million Major donations: Jewish Community Foun- dation in 2003 and 2004: $14.78 million Old Globe Theater in 2009 and 2016: $7 million KPBS in 2000: $2 million With Irwin Jacobs,
Viterbi founded Qual- comm. His wife, Edna, who died in 2015, loved San Diego arts and cul- ture. The Old Globe commemorated her gift of $2 million by nam- ing a theater lobby for her and her husband. (In 2016, Viterbi gave
another $5 million to the Old Globe in her memory.) His name graces the University of Southern California School of Engineering, where he earned his PhD and which, in 2004, received a $52 million grant from one of its noteworthiest graduates. His great invention
is the Viterbi algorithm: it is the mathematical formula by which voice and data can travel noiselessly and effi- ciently across a wireless cellular line. Or as sev- eral geeky sources call it — a universal appli- cation that decodes the convolutional codes of digital communication. Convolutional? That which is coiled together. Viterbi separated the inseparable cacophony of voice and data, and the discovery has led to the earth’s daily 12.4
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WEST HEALTH/JOHN ARISTIZABAL
22 San Diego Reader April 20, 2017
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