Technology firms are helping to shield Canadian universities from falling government support as their entrepreneurial players become the latest category of donors targeted by university development offices.

Late last month, Montreal's McGill University received the largest reported donation in Canadian university history - C$64 million (Pounds 28.4 million) - from retired professor Richard Tomlinson, who made his money from the high-tech industry.

"I think this demonstrates the wealth potential for what's out there," Martha Piper, University of British Columbia president, told The THES after the donation. A C$50 million gift from a diamond prospector a year and a half earlier had given British Columbia the largest donation in Canada before the McGill donation.

Dr Piper, a McGill alumna herself, said the gift pointed to a trend where the most significant amounts seem to come from individuals with allegiances to a university and not from corporations, which tend to spread their donations across a range of institutions.

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Dr Tomlinson, 76, who taught chemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he would occasionally hand out stock tips to his students, retired in 1988. He went on to become a founding director of Gennum Corporation, the world's largest manufacturer of microchips for hearing aids. Dr Tomlinson's Ontario-based company has been averaging more than 20 per cent annual growth and earned C$17.5million in profits in the 1999 fiscal year.

His association with McGill started during his PhD studies, which he completed in 1948 before studying at Cambridge University and joining McMaster in 1950. Negotiations for the donation, comprised of C$4 million in cash and C$60 million in securities, primarily Gennum stock, began several years ago.

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"It wasn't such a large donation when I started to make it," Dr Tomlinson said.