February 10, 2014 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Amount donated in 2013: Approximately $750-million
Beneficiary: Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation
Background: Mr. Mitchell founded Mitchell Energy and Development, a gas and oil company in The Woodlands, Tex. He sold the company in 2002 to Devon Energy for approximately $3-billion.
Mr. Mitchell, who was 94 when he died in July, left an estimated $750-million to the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, which he and his late wife established in 1978.
The philanthropy supports a variety of nonprofits throughout Texas, with its current grant making aimed at clean energy, natural-gas sustainability, science, and water.
Mr. Mitchell died a billionaire, but he did not start out that way.
Born in Galveston, Tex., in 1919, his parents emigrated from Greece. (The family’s original surname was Paraskevopoulos.) His father operated a shoeshine business, and the family lived above the shop. As a teenager, Mr. Mitchell found summer work in the Louisiana oil fields and earned a degree in 1940 in petroleum engineering at what is now Texas A&M University.
He went on to work as an engineering and geology consultant and over time bought out the partners of one of the companies for which he worked. That company eventually became Mitchell Energy and Development, and Mr. Mitchell would later become known for pioneering shale-drilling techniques.
He has been credited with being the first to commercially use hydraulic fracturing, a process that uses a pressurized mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to release natural gas from deeply embedded rock formations. The practice has become both controversial and widely used throughout the world.
Through the foundation, Mr. Mitchell gave away more than $400-million to nonprofits over the last 35 years.
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Learn more: See this donor’s listing in our database of major gifts, America’s Top Donors.
