The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received a $140 million gift to use as it sees fit, the college said Wednesday. The donor, an alumnus, wishes to remain anonymous.
The donation gives the school far-reaching flexibility to bolster such areas as academic resources, research, digital learning, and financial aid.
“No one has ever made it through life without someone else’s help,” the donor said in a statement. “As a past recipient of MIT’s generous financial aid, I benefited tremendously from the opportunity to pursue my MIT education and am extremely appreciative of all the ways that MIT has shaped me.”
“I hope this gift inspires others to give back to MIT and to pay it forward to the society that we all share.”
MIT President L. Rafael Reif called such unrestricted resources “the vital fuel that helps big ideas take off” among faculty and students.
“This remarkable gift will magnify our strength in education, research, and innovation and help foster transformative discoveries, inventions, and solutions to conquer new frontiers and build a better world,” Reif said.
The college also said the gift will strengthen its commitment to financial aid, ensuring that all accepted students will be able to enroll at the school, regardless of financial circumstances.
MIT announced the donation as it enters the second year of the public phase of an ambitious $5 billion fund-raising campaign, which it aims to use to target some of humanity’s toughest challenges. As of June 1, MIT said, it had raised $3.4 billion toward that goal.
The school has received large financial gifts before — some much bigger than the one announced Wednesday. In 2000, International Data Group founder Patrick J. McGovern Jr. and his wife, entrepreneur Lore Harp McGovern, pledged $350 million. The donation led to the creation of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Roy Greene of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Maddie Kilgannon can be reached at maddie.kilgannon@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @MaddieKilgannon.