Ella Sachs Plotz (November 10, 1888 – April 13, 1922) was an American philanthropist, for whom the Ella Sachs Plotz Foundation for the Advancement of Scientific Investigation was named after.

Early life

Ella Sachs was born in New York City, the daughter of banker

Samuel Sachs Samuel Sachs (; July 28, 1851 – March 2, 1935) was an American investment banker. He is most known for co-founding Goldman Sachs along with Marcus Goldman. He is noted for changing the nature of merchant banking by underwriting of the flotatio ...

and Louisa Goldman Sachs. The extended

Goldman–Sachs family The Goldman–Sachs family is a family of Ashkenazi Jewish descent known for the leading investment bank Goldman Sachs. Marcus Goldman, while attending classes at the synagogue in Würzburg, met Joseph Sachs, who would become his lifelong friend. ...

was Jewish. Her father and maternal grandfather

Marcus Goldman Marcus Goldman (born Marcus Goldmann; December 9, 1821 – July 20, 1904) was a German American investment banker, businessman, and financier. He was the founder of Goldman Sachs, which has since become one of the world's largest investment ban ...

founded

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

, an investment banking firm. Her eldest brother

Paul J. Sachs Paul Joseph Sachs (November 24, 1878 – February 18, 1965) was an American investor, businessman and museum director. Sachs served as associate director of the Fogg Art Museum and as a partner in the financial firm Goldman Sachs. He is recogni ...

was a professor of fine arts, and associate director of the

Fogg Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Philanthropy and personal life

Sachs was elected to the board of directors of the

National Urban League The National Urban League (NUL), formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for Afri ...

in 1915. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

she was a canteen worker in France, Italy, and England with the

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

. She was a trustee of

Fisk University Fisk University is a Private university, private Historically black colleges and universities, historically black Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus i ...

. Ella Sachs married physician and bacteriologist Henry (Harry) Plotz in 1920. Judge

Benjamin Cardozo Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (May 24, 1870 – July 9, 1938) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the New York Court of Appeals from 1914 to 1932 and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1932 until his deat ...

officiated at their wedding. She died in childbirth in 1922, aged 33 years, in Paris.

Legacy

The Ella Sachs Plotz Foundation made hundreds of small cash grants to individual scientists worldwide, "toward the solution of problems in medicine and surgery or in branches of science bearing on medicine and surgery". Beneficiaries included biochemist Hans Krebs, neurosurgeon Roy Glenwood Spurling, and pharmacologist Henry Gray Barbour. The foundation's papers are in the Harvard Art Museums Archives, part of the Papers of Paul J. Sachs. Plotz left the National Urban League $5000 in her will, and the Urban League created an Ella Sachs Plotz Fellowship program in her memory, open to Black students pursuing social work degrees. Recipients of the Plotz Fellowship included educator

Ethel McGhee Davis Ethel Elizabeth McGhee Davis (November 30, 1899July 13, 1990) was an American educator, social worker, and college administrator. She served as the student adviser (1928–1931) and as the Dean of Women (1931–1932) for Spelman College in Atla ...

and economist

Abram Lincoln Harris Abram Lincoln Harris Jr. (January 17, 1899 – November 6, 1963) was an American economist, academic, anthropologist and a social critic of the condition of black people in the United States. He was considered by many as the first African Americ ...

. In 1924, Fisk University established an Ella Sachs Plotz Professorship, endowed by a memorial gift from her brother.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plotz, Ella Sachs 1888 births 1922 deaths Deaths in childbirth American women philanthropists American women in World War I