In 1994, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research was founded by Jim and Virginia Stowers with a $500 million donation. Over the next decade, the couple endowed the institute, based in Kansas City, MO, with gifts totaling almost $2 billion.

Jim Stowers is the founder of the multi-billion-dollar American Century Companies, and Virginia Stowers a nurse-anesthetist. Both are cancer survivors. Together, they have dedicated their personal fortune to benefiting humankind through basic research on genes and proteins.