The money raised by Led Zeppelin‘s 2007 comeback show at London’s O2 Arena has helped to fund a £26 million donation to Oxford University.
The show took place as a tribute to the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died in 2006. Tickets cost £125 and the money went to the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund.
Ertegun’s widow, Mica, has now donated money from the fund to Oxford University, to help create scholarships for humanities students. The Daily Mail reports that the donation is one of the biggest ever in the university’s 900-year history.
The Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities will help finance students studying for subjects including literature, history, music and art history. There will be 15 scholarships to start with, rolling into 35 each year as the programme becomes more established.
Mica Ertegun and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones were both in attendance at Oxford University to see the programme launched. Jones said he was “very proud” that the money from the concerts had gone to the new programme, while Mica Ertegun added: “For Ahmet and for me, one of the great joys of life has been the study of history, music, languages, literature, art and archaeology.”
She continued: “In these times, when there is so much strife in the world, I believe it is tremendously important to support those things that endure across time, that bind people together from every culture, and that enrich the capacity of human beings to understand one another and make the world a more humane place.”