Eugene Michael Lang (March 16, 1919 – April 8, 2017) was an American philanthropist who founded REFAC Technology Development Corporation in 1951. REFAC held patents relating to liquid crystal displays, automated teller machines, credit card verification systems, bar code scanners, video cassette recorders, cassette players, camcorders, electronic keyboards, and spreadsheets, and filed thousands of lawsuits against other corporations to secure licensing fees or out-of-court settlements, a business practice often criticized as

patent trolling In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or ...

. He was also the chairman of the board at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...

Life and career

Lang was born in 1919 in New York City, the son of Ida (Kaslow) and Daniel Lang,

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

immigrants from Russia and Hungary. He attended

public school Public school may refer to: * State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government *Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England and ...

s including

Townsend Harris High School Townsend Harris High School at Queens College (THHS) is a public magnet A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a fo ...

. At the age of 15 he was admitted as a scholarship student to

, and received a B.A. in economics in 1938. He then received an M.S. from

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one of the oldest busin ...

in 1940. He studied mechanical engineering at the

Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United Sta ...

from 1940 to 1941. He was married to Theresa (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth ...

Volmar) Lang from 1946 until her death in 2008. They had three children:

Jane Lang Jane Lang is an American lawyer, arts philanthropist, and arts education promoter. She has been characterized as a neighborhood activist, the primary force responsible for revitalizing a run-down area of Washington, D.C.Marks, Peter (Sunday, Marc ...

, David Lang and

Stephen Lang Stephen Lang (born July 11, 1952) is an American actor. He is known for roles in films including '' Manhunter'' (1986), '' Gettysburg'', '' Tombstone'' (both 1993), '' Gods and Generals'' (2003), '' Public Enemies'' (2009), ''Conan the Barbaria ...

. He created the I Have A Dream Foundation in 1981,

Project Pericles Project Pericles Inc. is a non-profit organization composed of liberal arts colleges and universities geared towards the ideas that social responsibility and participatory citizenship are essential parts of an undergraduate curriculum, in the cl ...

in 2001, and the Lang Youth Medical Program in 2003. He has also made large donations to

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

's undergraduate liberal arts college -

Eugene Lang College Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, commonly referred to as Lang, is the seminar-style, undergraduate, liberal arts college of The New School. It is located on-campus in Greenwich Village in New York City on West 11th Street off 6th Avenue. ...

- and the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at

, which is part of Columbia University. In 1986, Lang received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by

Jefferson Awards The Jefferson Awards Foundation was created in 1972 by the American Institute for Public Service. The Jefferson Awards are given at both national and local levels. Local winners are ordinary people who do extraordinary things without expectatio ...

. Also that year

Harry Reasoner Harry Truman Reasoner (April 17, 1923 – August 6, 1991) was an American journalist for CBS and ABC News, known for his adroit use of language as a television commentator, and as a founder of the long-running ''60 Minutes'' program. Over th ...

interviewed Lang discussing the school program for the news show

60 minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique st ...

. In 1996 President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (Birth name, né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 ...

awarded him the

Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merit ...

. His philanthropies, focused primarily on education, altogether exceed $150,000,000. Due to his philanthropy in education, he held 38 honorary degrees as of December 2012. In 2003 he endowed the Lang Youth Medical Program at

NewYork-Presbyterian The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New ...

-Columbia Medical Center. This 6-year program immerses underserved Washington Heights youths in science-based afterschool program.

Robin Hood

In 1986, after watching an episode of CBS News'

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique st ...

about businessman and philanthropist Eugene Lang,

Paul Tudor Jones Paul Tudor Jones II (born September 28, 1954) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, conservationist and philanthropist. In 1980, he founded his hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corporation, an asset management firm headquartered in Stamford, ...

adopted a sixth-grade class in

Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Bedford–Stuyvesant (), colloquially known as Bed–Stuy, is a neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Bedford–Stuyvesant is bordered by Flushing Avenue to the north (bordering Williamsburg), Classon A ...

at an underperforming public school. Jones guaranteed college scholarships to students that graduated from high school. His idea was this would be an incentive to students to engage in academics with his goal being that 90% of those students successfully complete high school. However, only 33% of the students in the class eventually graduated from high school. Jones believed he "vastly underestimated both the academic and social challenges facing

he students in the class he adopted He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

and his program was "completely ill-equipped to

elp them Elp is a small village in the Dutch province of Drenthe. It is a part of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe Midden-Drenthe () is a municipality in the northeastern Netherlands. The municipality was created in 1998, in a merger of the former muni ...

in an efficient fashion." In his 2009 speech, Jones explained that this major failure on his part taught him lessons he's applied in subsequent education efforts. Jones eventually went on to start the much-publicized

Robin Hood Foundation The Robin Hood Foundation is a charitable organization which attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. The organization also administers a relief fund for disasters in the New York City area. In 2010, a key supporter gave ...

and credits Lang as his inspiration.

Death

Lang died at his home in New York City on April 8, 2017, at the age of 98.

References

External links

60 Minutes
clip of Paul Tudor Jones discussing Mr. Lang inspiration. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lang, Eugene 1919 births 2017 deaths Activists from New York (state) American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American people of Russian-Jewish descent Jewish American philanthropists Philanthropists from New York (state) Businesspeople from Queens, New York Columbia Business School alumni People from Queens, New York Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Swarthmore College alumni Townsend Harris High School alumni 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American philanthropists 21st-century American Jews