Did you know … How Green Library got its name?

Green Library is named for MIT-trained geophysicist and co-founder of Texas Instruments Cecil Howard Green (1900-2003) and his wife Ida Mable Flansburgh Green (d. 1986). Green Library, formerly the 1980-completed “east wing” of Stanford’s original Main Library, is now the name for the complex of two integrated library buildings built more than half-a-century apart. The Greens were the primary donors for the construction of the original Cecil H. Green Library, the main humanities and social sciences library on campus. In 1999, following the reopening of the newly named Bing Wing, Stanford was given permission to apply the Green name to both library buildings to further honor its benefactors.

Keen philanthropists with a deep interest in supporting education, the Greens made significant gifts to Stanford starting in the 1970s. Theirs was the primary gift for the building of the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Earth Sciences Research Building, and they endowed the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Professorship in the School of Earth Sciences, as well as the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Fellowship in Geophysics. In 1987, Cecil provided an endowment to support the new endowed chair for the Ida M. Green Director of University Libraries, now named the Ida M. Green University Librarian.

In addition to their support of Stanford, the Greens helped found colleges at the University of Texas at Dallas, Oxford University, and Green College at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Green was born in Manchester, England, and was awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. In recognition for their extraordinary support and service to Stanford, the University conferred upon the couple the Uncommon Man and Uncommon Woman Awards in 1988.

For more information see:

SULAIR News, April 18, 2003: Cecil H. Green Dies

Stanford Report, April 16, 2003: “Cecil H. Green, longtime Stanford benefactor, dies at 102”




Photo Courtesy of Stanford University Archives