The Science Museum of Minnesota is ringing in the new year with a historic $6.5 million gift, the largest in the organization’s history.

Gifted by the estate of University of Minnesota advertising professor Dr. William D. Wells, the money will fund the museum’s “chair of science” position, the organization announced on Wednesday.

That role heads the museum’s Center for Research and Collections, which cares for the organization’s collection and conducts research and outreach in anthropology, biology, paleontology, and environmental science.

Before Wells’ gift, the largest donation the museum had ever received was $1 million in 2019 by an anonymous donor.

The Science Museum was founded in 1907 and welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, according to a press release issued Wednesday. Museum officials noted that Wells recognized the museum as a valuable resource for continuing education in the community.

“We are proud and honored to be the recipient of Dr. Wells’ historic gift,” said Science Museum president and CEO Alison Rempel Brown in the release. “We are grateful that Dr. Wells recognized our value as a community resource to inspire people we serve to continue learning well beyond the classroom years.”

Wells died in 2020, but his estate has continued to donate to causes across the Twin Cities. In 2021, his estate gifted Twin Cities Public Television a $9 million donation to establish the William D. Wells Fund for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education. That also marked the largest donation in TPT’s history.

The Science Museum’s recent gift is just one of the many large — and sometimes unexpected — donations that have landed at Minnesota nonprofits in recent years. Some of those unexpected gifts originated from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who has vowed to return much of her wealth to “the society that helped generate it.”