Gift for UCI libraries

The family of a former UC Irvine professor has donated $150,000 to the university’s libraries in exchange for a namesake at one of the science library’s reading rooms.

The Ralph W. and Leona B. Gerard Family Trust made the donation in December. The gift went into the previously established Ralph W. Gerard Library Endowed Fund, which supports UCI libraries. Marge Brannon, the development director for UCI libraries, said the fund covered different needs on campus every year.

“The joy of this is that it’s flexible in how we can allocate it,” she said. “It’s perpetual. When it’s an endowed fund, there can be something year after year after year, indefinitely.”

Gerard, whose research centered around the nervous system, schizophrenia and other areas, served as a professor of biological sciences from 1963 to 1970, starting as a founding faculty member two years before the university opened. He died in 1974.