Rubin, Samuel
RUBIN, SAMUEL
RUBIN, SAMUEL (1901–1978), U.S. philanthrophist. Rubin was born in Bialystok, Poland, but was brought to the U.S. by his parents at the age of four. He studied at the City College of New York, but entered business and in 1937 founded the firm of Faberge, importers of French perfumes, which he sold in 1963 for $25 million.
Rubin was an outstanding philanthropist for both United States and Israeli causes. He was one of the founders of the New York Bellevue Medical Center, and the Fordham University Medical Library, and endowed the chair of anthropology at Brandeis University, in addition to supporting numerous other medical and cultural institutions. In 1955 he donated $250,000 for the establishment of a chain of community cultural centers in Israeli development areas; he founded a cancer detection clinic at the Rambam Hospital, Haifa. In 1957 the Rubin Foundation, which he founded, provided the funds to acquire a building to house the Jerusalem Conservatoire of Music, to which he donated $325,000 through the American-Israel Cultural Foundation, and it was given the name of the Rubin Academy of Music.
On the 20th anniversary of the Rubin Academy of Music in 1977, he donated a laboratory for electronic music.