Eric Schmidt

• Age: 51
• Education: B.S. in electrical engineering, Princeton University; M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science, the University of California, Berkeley
• Career: Sun Microsystems, 1983-1997; CEO of Novell, 1997-2001; CEO of Google 2001-present.

BLACKSBURG -- The chairman and chief executive officer of Google has given Virginia Tech's College of Engineering a $2 million gift.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, an alumnus of Princeton University, grew up in Blacksburg, the son of a Virginia Tech economics professor. He was also next-door neighbor to Paul Torgersen, who was then dean of Tech's College of Engineering and who served as president of the university from 1993 to 2000.

Schmidt used to mow Torgersen's lawn on Palmer Drive, and the former Tech president has kept in touch with him over the years.

This gift, which the university received last month, establishes the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean's Chair in Engineering, named after Torgersen and his wife.

Schmidt, 51, is on the board of directors of Apple Computer and has been named by some gambling Web sites as the favorite to win Time Magazine's Person of the Year award for 2006. Forbes Magazine ranks Schmidt as the 129th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $4.8 billion.

Schmidt, who received master's and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, spoke at Tech's commencement in 1999 at Torgersen's request. He's given to Tech before, establishing the Wilson E. Schmidt Endowed Professorship in Economics at the university with a $250,000 gift in honor of his late father in 1999.

The endowed chair will be used by Engineering Dean Richard Benson at his discretion to support students and programs in the college. Benson said in an e-mail Thursday that the gift will allow him to fulfill his vision for the college.

"The idea that Eric Schmidt would think so much of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, when he did not obtain his degree here, is overwhelming," he said.

Torgersen recruited the gift as part of the university's latest capital campaign, which Tech will go public with next spring. While no official goal for the campaign has been announced, it's expected to be at least $800 million.

Torgersen first mentioned the chair to Schmidt when he met him for breakfast in February in California. At a dinner in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14 honoring Schmidt's induction into the National Academy of Engineering, he spoke with Torgersen again and agreed to the gift. Torgersen had expected the chair to be named after the Google CEO.

But Schmidt had different plans, which Torgersen didn't discover until it became official a couple of weeks ago.

"I was stunned," he said. "It took me completely by surprise. It was an incredibly nice gesture on his part."

Torgersen said it was obvious Schmidt was very intelligent even when he was a boy. He sought advice from the engineering dean when deciding whether to go to Princeton or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study engineering. He followed Torgersen's advice.

"I told him, 'For engineering, you'd probably be better at MIT, but for overall prestige of the school you'd have to pick Princeton,' " Torgersen said.

Schmidt, who lives in California with his wife, Wendy, led the development of Java -- Sun Microsystems' platform-independent programming technology -- as software manager with the company before becoming chairman of Novell, which he left to join Google in 2001.

In an e-mail Thursday, Schmidt said his gift is a tribute to the contributions Torgersen and his wife have given to Tech.

"There is no one I know who did more for Virginia Tech than Paul ... in the past 40 years."