Cecil H. Green

Cecil Howard Green was born in Whitechapel, London, in 1900 and emigrated to the United States as a child, eventually earning a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT. He joined Geophysics Service Incorporated in 1930 and became one of the four principals who purchased the company in 1941 and guided it through its postwar transformation into Texas Instruments. Green's contributions were primarily in building TI's organizational structure, its financial management capabilities, and its international business development. He and his wife Ida were among the most significant philanthropists in the history of Texas higher education, giving more than 200 million dollars to institutions including MIT, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Southern Methodist University, funding the Cecil H. Green Science Library at Stanford, and endowing professorships and research facilities across a dozen institutions.

Cecil H. Green served as a director of Texas Instruments from its founding until his retirement from active corporate involvement in the 1970s and made essential contributions to the company's financial management and international expansion. His longest-lasting legacy, however, is philanthropic: the Green family donated more than 200 million dollars to educational and scientific institutions over their lifetimes, establishing the University of Texas at Dallas as a research university—a transformation that ultimately seeded the Dallas technology ecosystem from which TI continues to draw engineering talent. Green was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 for his services to education and died in 2003 at the age of 102.