G. Wayne Clough, the president of Georgia Tech, will become head of the Smithsonian Institution July 1, more than a year after the previous chief, Lawrence Small, resigned over accountability issues.

“This is a treasure of our country, and it needs to move forward,” Clough, 66, said Saturday.

Little-known philanthropist Chuck Feeney has patterned his life on an Irish proverb: “There are no pockets in a shroud.”

As Margot Roosevelt of the Los Angeles Times reported in a rare profile yesterday, Feeney plans to give away $8 billion in the next 8 years.

Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, which was bought by Bernard Arnault in 1997, put most of his fortune into Atlantic Philanthropies eight years ago. He gave the foundation leadership an usual mission: Spend every dollar by 2016.

James H. Simons keeps putting his money where his mind is.

The billionaire former mathematics professor and his wife, Marilyn Hawrys Simons, have given $60 million to Stony Brook University.

Brad Pitt is unlikely to quit his day job, especially with a houseful of Jolie-Pitt munchkins. And judging from the picture of partner Angelina’s much talked about “bump” during this past weekend’s Independent Spirit Awards, child number five may be on the way.

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell has learned that even generosity can need an explanation.

Cornwell gave $1 million donation to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City this month.

But worried that some of her remarks about the gift might be read as demeaning police officers, Cornwell last week spent $250,000 to set the record straight.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative may soon receive a big boost from the deep-pocketed Peter Peterson.

Ellen DeGeneres is like the Big Easy. She’s all about fun. After Hurricane Katrina, add big heart.

Ellen, a native of New Orleans, has raised over $10 million dollars for Katrina relief. In Fat Tuesday’s episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, she focused again on Katrina relief efforts. Former President George H. W. Bush sent a videotaped message thanking her for her fundraising.

In the same show, Ellen gave a new GM Acadia to a single mother who lost her home in the hurricane and works 20 hours a day so she could rebuild. She continues to ask her viewers to support Brad Pitt’s Make It Right, a group that hopes to build 150 environmentally friendly homes in the Lower 9th Ward. She has raised over $800,000 for Pitt.

The head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Patty Stonesifer, told The New York Times that she would step down as head of the world’s largest philanthropic organization by the end of the year.

“It’s the right time,” Stonesifer, 51, told the Times. “We have a lot of momentum now, our strategies are in place, and it’s time to take the organization to the next level where we deliver on those strategies.”

Lev Leviev is perhaps best known as the man who defied De Beers, the mighty cartel that controlled the flow of the world’s supply of rough diamonds.

By doing so, Leviev has become one of the world’s richest men. Close friends claim he’s worth about $8 billion, but Forbes lists him at a conservative $4.1 billion.

And of course, immense wealth almost always makes access easier to the halls of political power. Among his circle of friends are the heads of state of the splintered republics of the former Soviet Union and the African nations of Angola and Namibia.

While visiting his West Coast Limited stores in the late 1970s, Leslie Wexner was intrigued by a shop that sold women’s underwear. It was called Victoria’s Secret.

It was brothel Victorian, he once said in an interview. Not erotic, but very sexy.

Wexner, who left his family’s general clothing store to specialize in women’s casual wear, saw the possibilities. He bought the store and catalog in 1982 for $1 million.

Do a Google search for Dr. Larry Brilliant and you’ll get links to the worlds of medicine, technology, music and religion.

Prominent, too, is a link to Google Inc. itself, as Brilliant, 63, is now the executive director of Google.org, the Internet company’s philanthropic arm.

Andre Agassi

Hey, bowling fans, ever wondered whom to thank for ESPN’s coverage of your once-neglected sport? That’s Steve Miller, who, while president and CEO of the Professional Bowlers Association, negotiated two exclusive television deals with the network.

This week, Miller was named to the newly created post of chief executive officer of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, which is trying to become national in scope.

Alan Schwartz’s predecessor as CEO of Bear Stearns spent too much time on the golf course and at the bridge table, critics say.

That shouldn’t be the case for Schwartz, named to the top spot this week. Besides his demanding job, Schwartz is very involved in philanthropy and community affairs.

Who knew Bill Gates could be funny?

In his “last day” video shown at the Consumer Electronics Show Sunday, Gates debuted his comedic side, with the help of some famous friends.

In the video, Gates goes over the opportunities he could possibly pursue after leaving Microsoft full-time. He pumps iron with Matthew McConaughey, raps with Jay-Z, and offers his Guitar Hero skills to U2’s frontman, Bono. After trying to negotiate a biopic with Steven Spielberg and George Clooney, Gates offers his services as a running mate to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Difficult times for a company mean difficult times for its board of directors.

And these certainly are difficult times for Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan.

Because of losses related to subprime mortgage lending, the Seattle-based firm has closed operations, cut jobs, slashed its dividend, and watched the price of its stock plummet to its lowest level in more than 11 years, closing Friday at $13.07.

“Image is everything,” a shaggy-haired Andre Agassi proclaimed as he hawked Canon cameras as a teenager.

Over the next 20 years, the tennis superstar traded handsomely on his world-famous name and image, earning an estimated $200 million through deals with Nike, Adidas, Head, Genworth Financial, Aramis and American Express, among others.

During life, Heinz Prechter was a powerful force in industry and politics.

He got his start in the 1960s, by installing car sunroofs, a feature common in his home country of Germany, but relatively unheard of then in the U.S. Prechter built the operation into a global automotive company, ASC Inc.

At the same time, he assumed enormous influence in Republican politics, co-chairing the national finance committee for President George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election and bringing early support to George W. Bush’s first presidential run.

Yet his public image was very much at odds with his private torments. Prechter suffered from manic depression, or bipolar disorder, but had kept his illness secret.

In 1961, A&P supermarket heir Marie Robertson and her husband, Charles, gave $35 million in stock to Princeton University for its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Today, the gift is worth more than $880 million.

But the university and the descendants of the couple have spent millions in legal costs in a years-long fight over how the money should be used.