Bobst, Mamdouha As-Sayyid, 1925-2015

In April 1961 Bobst married Mamdouha As-Sayyid, who was a member of the Lebanese delegation to the United Nations, and decades his junior. He bought her many fine jewels, including a diamond tiara formerly the property of Queen Geraldine of Albania. In 1988, Mamdouha Bobst donated the records and personal effects of her late husband to the Fales Library at New York University. Mamdouha Bobst died in 2015.

Subject Names: Bobst, Mamdouha As-Sayyid; Immediate Source of Acquisition: The Elmer Holmes Bobst Collection, donated to New York University by Mrs. Mamdouha Bobst, represents a portion of the records and personal effects of her late husband, Elmer Holmes Bobst. This material was transferred to the New York University Archives by Mrs. Bobst from her residence in New York in 1988 in order to establish a permanent home for the collection in the library which bears the Bobst name. Additional material given by Mrs. Bobst after 1989 has been incorporated with the original gift. The accession number associated with this gift is 1998.067; Biographical Note: Bobst married the former Mamdouha As-Sayyid, a social scientist serving on Lebanon's delegation to the United Nations; Until his death in 1978, at the age of 93, Bobst remained active. His legacy is a rich one, and his work goes on, sustained today by the philanthropic efforts of his widow, Mamdouha Bobst.

Mamdouha Bobst, a philanthropist and public health advocate whose donations benefited universities, hospitals and clinics for animals, died on Sept. 10 in Manhattan. She was 90; A Lebanese delegate to the United Nations in the early 1960s, she married the pharmaceutical executive Elmer Holmes Bobst and became a benefactor of New York University, NYU Langone Medical Center, Princeton University, the Animal Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the American Cancer Society, the American University of Beirut and its medical center, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, among other institutions and organizations; Mamdouha El-Sayed was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, on July 8, 1925. She graduated in 1947 from the American University of Beirut, where she majored in Arabic; studied at the University of Birmingham in England; and earned a master’s degree in public heath from the University of California, Berkeley; She met Mr. Bobst through a mutual friend, the philanthropist Mary Woodward Lasker; they married in 1961; The couple established the Bobst Foundation in 1968. In 1973, they donated $11 million toward the completion of N.Y.U.’s new library on Washington Square, which bears Elmer Bobst’s name. When he died in 1978, she became president of the foundation, continuing his commitment to cancer research and other causes and donating $10 million to create the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University;

Montclair, NJ, April 22 [1961]; Elmer H. Bobst, chairman of board of Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Corportations; Mamdouha As-Sayyid, member of the Lebenese delegation to the UN; marrid today at home of bridegroom; As-Sayyid graduated from American University of Beirut (1947), attended University of Birmingham, England and University of California; Bobst is chairman of executive board of the American Cancer Society, trustee of Rutgers College of Pharmacy, Franklin and Marshall College, University of Pennsylvania