Giving Back

Bose Corporation founder Amar Bose ‘51, SM ‘52, ScD ‘56, has given MIT the majority of the stock in the company, which is known for its audio equipment.

The donation, announced in April, is in the form of nonvoting shares. MIT will receive cash dividends on its shares in years when the company pays dividends; that income will be used to sustain and advance MIT’s education and research mission. 

Under the terms of the gift, MIT cannot sell its Bose shares and will not participate in the management or governance of the company. The corporation will remain private and independent, operating with no change in strategy or leadership. Bose, 81, will remain chairman and technical director of the company, whose value is undisclosed. 

After earning three MIT degrees in electrical engineering, Bose was asked to join the faculty in 1956, accepting with the intention of teaching for no more than two years. But he remained until 2001, making important contributions to the Institute’s teaching of undergraduate electrical engineering. 

When Bose was a grad student, he bought a stereo and was disappointed by its sound quality. That started his quest for a way to reproduce sound more realistically. He founded Bose Corporation in 1964 and soon developed stereo speakers and loudspeaker systems that did just that. Privately owned, the company focuses on long-term research. “Dr. Bose has always been more concerned about the next two decades than about the next two quarters,” President Susan ­Hockfield said when MIT announced the gift.

Bose “set the highest teaching standards, for which he is still admired and loved by his faculty colleagues and the many students he taught,” ­Hockfield said. “His insatiable curiosity propelled remarkable research, both at MIT and within the company he founded.”