A $15 million fund, intended for basic research in the physical sciences, has been established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Money for the fund, which will be known as “The Alfred P. Sloan Fund for Basic Research in the Physical Sciences”, comes from a personal gift of $5 million from Mr. Sloan, which will be matched in equal amounts by a Sloan Foundation gift and another earlier Foundation grant to MIT. Considered one of the largest private gifts to research in recent years, the fund will approximately double the amount of money available at MIT for basic research. The object of the fund will be to help correct the imbalance existing between the resources of applied and basic research and, in general, to support research in those areas of the physical sciences that are not otherwise heavily subsidized.