In 2021, the Boston Museum of Science and the family of Leonard Nimoy announced plans to develop a memorial honoring the late Star Trek legend. The project has been seeking donations and now work can start, thanks to an anchor donation from Android, Inc. co-Founder Rich Miner.
Nimoy’s Salute is a go
The planned monument is a 20-foot, illuminated, stainless steel sculpture shaped in the famous “live long and prosper” Vulcan salute developed by Nimoy for Star Trek. The sculpture is designed by artist David Phillips and will be located in front of the Boston Museum of Science at Science Park. The project has a fundraising goal of $500,000 but after a year, the museum had only collected a fraction of that amount. Now thanks to a six-figure donation from Rich Miner the museum has enough to get started while continuing to fundraise.
Artist rendering of Nimoy monument at Boston’s Science Museum
Like Leonard Nimoy, Rich Miner is a Boston native. He earned his Ph.D., Master and B.S. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Has continued to live and work in the area—his work includes co-founding Android, the world’s most popular operating system with over 3 billion active users. After selling Android to Google in 2005, Miner co-founded GV, Google’s first venture fund, which has built innovative technologies and companies through investments in a number of the past decades’ most successful startups. Rich continues to do advanced product development at Google as well as advise GV. He is also building and investing in innovative startups with his angel fund, ExVC. And he is a Trekkie.
Miner tells TrekMovie why he stepped up to help the Nimoy Memorial:
“The Star Trek series and Spock’s character were an early influence on my interest in science and technology along with being an inspiration for several of my start-up companies. Like Leonard, my parents also grew up in the Jewish neighborhoods of Boston.
Supporting the Leonard Nimoy-Live Long and Prosper Memorial Sculpture on display at the Museum of Science in Boston will not only be a beautiful tribute honoring Leonard Nimoy’s legacy but will be a symbol for peace, tolerance and unity for millions of visitors each year”
Rich Miner at TechCrunch Disrupt 2015 (Getty)
Next steps for the Nimoy Memorial
The Boston Museum of Science and the family of Leonard Nimoy are working on developing the next phase for the Memorial project, and will announce more details soon. While Miner’s generous donation is enough to get the project going, they will still need more funding to finish the project.
Those interested in donating can visit mos.org/Nimoy. [NOTE: The fundraising page has not yet been updated with the new donation from Rich Miner.]
Leonard Nimoy at the 2013 premiere of Star Trek Into Darkness
Local news coverage of the Salute
Here is some coverage of the project from earlier this year from local Boston station WCVB, including interview clips from the artist and museum director.
Find more Star Trek celebrity articles.
I had to look him up to verify that “Rich Miner” is his real name. If you gave a fictional dotcom millionaire the name “Rich Miner” people would say it was too on-the-nose.
Ouch. Prior to this generous donation, the fundraiser for the memorial had only raised a bit over 34K For work to have begun, I’m assuming Mr. Miner ponied up most of the 500K needed. Thank you.
…..and donation made. Please contribute, any amount.
Done. Least I could do when he’s brought me so much joy over the years.
I donated in my friend’s honor last year. I’m glad this is finally getting built. I’m still amazed at the paltry amount that had been raised until now, even with heavy promotion.
This is the first time I have heard of this effort. I live in South Carolina. Perhaps they didn’t promote it enough.
This is terrific. How much is this “six-figure” donation?
While I don’t know, if it was enough to begin construction of the project, I’d imagine it was half to three quarters of the cost of the project.