Oxford Gets $41 Million Gift for Ertegun Scholarships February 29, 2012, 9:32 am As the man who founded Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun helped give careers to musical artists like Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Now the estate of Ertegun, who died in 2006, and his widow, Mica, have given more than $41 million to Oxford University that will benefit its graduate students in the humanities, the university announced on Wednesday. The gift, which Oxford said is the largest given for its humanities students in its 900-year history, will be used to create the Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Program in the Humanities, providing, at its start, 15 graduate scholarships a year in fields like literature, history and - of course - music, and will eventually be expanded to provide 35 such scholarships annually. The donation will also be used to pay the salary of an Ertegun Senior Scholar in Residence and for lectures, concerts and other programs at the Mica and Ahmet Ertegun House for the Study of the Humanities on the Oxford campus. Mrs. Ertegun said in a statement: "For Ahmet and for me, one of the great joys of life has been the study of history, music, languages, literature, art and archaeology. 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. Oxford said the Ertegun House would be ready for the first group of Ertegun Scholars in September.