Robert Larner

Larner was born Jan. 27, 1918 in Burlington, the seventh child of a Russian immigrant and his wife. He attended the public schools of Burlington, and became a state champion debater in high school. Scholarship money he won through debating allowed him to become the first member of his family to attend college. He entered the University of Vermont in 1936, and received his B.S. degree in 1939, and his M.D. from the UVM College of Medicine in 1942. After a brief internship at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Larner joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps and served during World War II in the Pacific Theater, treating wounded soldiers at Guadalcanal and Okinawa. After the war, Larner served a residency in Baltimore. He then settled in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, where he built a thriving internal medicine practice that spanned 40 years. From very early on, he began making investments in California real estate, building close relationships with hundreds of small business tenants. In September of 2016, Larner and his wife Helen donated a $66 million gift, the largest gift in the history of the University of Vermont. After the gift was made, the renaming of the university’s medical school was announced at the Burlington campus. The couple gave $19.7 million to the medical school in April of 2016. In total, the couple will have donated $100 million to UVM over their lifetimes.