Gift Planning

Canter’s Charitable Remainder Unitrust Supports Exploration of the Brain

January 30, 2012

After 49 years in the medical field, much of it as a professor of surgery at the George Washington University Medical Center, Dr. Jerome W. Canter ’52 hung up his scrubs eight years ago.

He still talks shop with his wife, Dorothy, who has a doctorate in biophysics, and two of his four sons: Robert J. Canter ’92, a surgical oncologist and assistant professor at University of California-Davis, and Daniel J. Canter ’95, an assistant professor of urology at Emory University. Sons Douglas and David Canter are both lawyers.

Canter launched a second career after earning an executive MBA from New York University. Today he counsels clients for Morgan Stanley, often advising them on investments in the biomedical field.

He has made his own investment in Princeton by establishing a charitable remainder unitrust, which allows donors to make a significant gift and receive payments back for life or for a specified term. When the trust ends, the remaining funds are used by Princeton. His gift, which counts toward the $1.75 billion goal for Princeton’s Aspire fundraising campaign, will benefit one of the campaign’s priorities—the Program in Neuroscience.

“The real advances of the future will come in neuroscience,” he says. “The field is exploding, and people are beginning to understand the implications research in this area will bring.”