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California State University, Monterey Bay

As CSU Monterey Bay's largest donor, Robert Darwin's estate gift will provide essential scholarship support to both current students and future generations. At 96 years old, Mr. Darwin has lived a full life as an actor, screenwriter, entrepreneur and photographer. He is currently completing his second book.

Mr. Darwin was born in 1926 and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. After serving three years in the U.S. Navy, he attended Rutgers University where, at his father's wise urging, he majored in business and finance.

After a career in Hollywood, in 1967 he formed a real estate acquisition partnership, bought a ranch in Carmel Valley, California and other properties throughout the West, raised thoroughbred horses and formed Transjet, the first jet-oriented, fixed-base operation in the Monterey area.

Returning to his writing skills, he served as editor of “The Streamliner", a rail-based, technically oriented quarterly publication. He also wrote “The History of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne", a large coffee table book that was highly praised for its rail photography.

Now officially retired but still hard at work, Mr. Darwin continues with his writings including a second memoir, “Fragments", which shares memorable episodes from his non-Hollywood years. He is also writing “Yuri", a historically-accurate accounting of his father's six-year-long flight out of the Ukraine after the assassination of his parents and younger sister by Bolshevik forces in October 1917, at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In recognition of his numerous accomplishments and tremendous generosity to CSU Monterey Bay, the Board of Trustees of the California State University and California State University, Monterey Bay are proud to confer upon Robert Darwin the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. ​