Richard P. Mellon, remembered as having done more for land conservation than any private individual in American history, died at age 81 at his summer home on Cousins Island, Maine.
The scale and breadth of giving under his leadership at the Richard King Mellon Foundation touched nearly every aspect of life and culture in southwestern Pennsylvania. But it was his commitment to the creation of Pitt’s Cancer Institute (now the UPMC Hillman Cancer Institute) in the mid-1980s that helped transform the region’s economic forecast by boosting the region's "eds and meds" sector, said Pitt Chancellor Emeritus Mark A. Nordenberg.