Kroc foundation

The Kroc Foundation was started by Ray A. Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation. Ray Kroc's brother, Robert Louis Kroc, became president of the Foundation in 1969. The Foundation sponsored conferences, which resulted in a number of publications, and was awarded more than 1600 research grants to institutions in the U.S. and eight foreign countries.

Biography

The following information is drawn primarily from the obituary for Robert Louis Kroc in the Santa Barbara News Press, May 9, 2002, B8.

Robert Louis Kroc was born in Chicago on June 19, 1907. He grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, received his BA and MA from Oberlin College, and his PhD in Zoology and Physiology from the University of Wisconsin in 1933. From 1933 to 1944 he taught at Indiana University. He then embarked upon a career in research, much of it with Warner Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and its Research Institute, from 1944 to 1969.

In 1969, after retiring, Kroc moved to Santa Ynez, California, where he became President of the Kroc Foundation, dedicated to research in the fields of diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis. The Kroc Foundation was started by Ray A. Kroc, Robert's brother and founder of McDonald's Corporation. The Foundation sponsored conferences at the J & R Ranch, which resulted in a number of publications. It also awarded more than 1600 research grants to institutions in the U.S. and eight foreign countries.

In 1984 Ray Kroc died. The Foundation disbanded the next year, but its influence continues through endowed lectureships and professorships at Harvard Medical School, Washington University St. Louis, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Robert Louis Kroc died in Santa Barbara, California, on April 19, 2002.

Further information about the Kroc Foundation may be found in The Kroc Foundation: 1965-1985, the final report which includes its grant and conference activities since 1982, a history of the Foundation from 1965, and a brief biography of Ray A. Kroc, its sole benefactor.