Dr. Rice, who was the wealthy grandson of a former mayor of Boston and governor of Massachusetts, had married Eleanor Widener, the widow of a Philadelphia tycoon who had been one of the richest men in America. (Her first husband and her son were on the Titanic when it sank.) With a fortune worth millions of dollars, Dr. Rice and his wife—who donated the Widener Library at Harvard University in memory of her late son—helped to finance a new lecture hall at the Royal Geographical Society.
