well as the world's largest cancer hospital (MD Anderson Cancer Center). History Founding and early years The Texas Medical Center was established in 1945, in part by funds endowed to the M.D. Anderson Foundation by businessman Monroe Dunaway Anderson. The fund's first gift was a check of $1,000 to the Junior League Eye Fund for eyeglasses. In 1941, the Texas State Legislature granted funds to the University of Texas for the purpose of starting a cancer research hospital. The M.D. Anderson Foundation matched the state's gift to the university by supplying funds and land on the condition that the hospital be established in Houston and named after its founder. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the purchase of from the estate of local entrepreneur George Hermann (namesake of Hermann Park) in 1944 for the construction of a 1,000-bed naval hospital in Houston. The hospital, later renamed the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, opened in 1946 and became a teaching facility for Baylor College of Medicine. In 1946, several projects were approved for inclusion in the Texas Medical Center including: Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center (whose campus was pre-existing in the district, having been built in the 1920s) Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, Houston Methodist Hospital The Shriners Crippled Children's Hospital (now known as Shriners Hospitals for Children) The Texas Medical Center Library M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research of the University of Texas began construction in 1953. Texas Children's Hospital admitted its first patient in 1954. During the late 1950s, the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research opened. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute at Houston added the Gimbel Research Wing. Texas Woman's University Nursing Program began instruction. In 1962, the Texas Heart Institute was chartered and became affiliated with Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center (known then as St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital) and Texas Children's Hospital. Ben Taub General Hospital of the Harris Health System (known then as Harris County Hospital District) opened in 1963. The TMC Library provides access to thousands of current digital books and journals and its John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center houses rare medical books dating back to the 1500s, historical manuscripts such as the McGovern Collection on the History of Medicine, the Menninger Collection of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, and the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission which recorded the aftereffects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recent history