Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel has bestowed honorary doctorate degrees upon Atherton businessman and philanthropist Lorry Lokey and U.C. Berkeley professor Jill Banfield. Lokey and Banfield were two of seven scientists, inventors and philanthropists honored May 12 in Beersheva.
Lokey, a Stanford University alumnus, founded the international media-relations wire service Business Wire in 1961 and sold it to Berkshire Hathaway in 2006. He has donated in excess of $700 million to charities, with the majority of the money given to schools, BGU noted. Currently, the Lorry I. Lokey Chemistry Building is being constructed at BGU.
Banfield is a noted professor, with an appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose field of interest is geomicrobiology, which is the study of how microorganisms shape, and are shaped by, their environments.