Thanks to his diligence, perseverance, and vision, Carlyle has thrived, and so has Mr. Rubenstein. This success has given him the opportunity to do what he’d always hoped to do—give back to the nation he credits for his success. He practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” purchasing and gifting historic documents and supporting historic landmarks and national cultural institutions like presidential homes Montpelier and Monticello, the Washington Monument, and the National Zoo. He purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta and lent it to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., while other historic documents he owns—the 13th Amendment, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation—are on permanent loan to the U.S. government or historic sites.

Although his passion for history drives the largest share of his giving, he has also made major contributions in health, higher education, and the arts. He provided the funds for the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and has given generously to Duke University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, and the Institute for Advanced Study. He donated millions to expand D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to renovate New York City’s Lincoln Center. He also donates his time, serving on over a dozen boards, including nearly all the recipients of his major gifts.

After decades of philanthropy, Mr. Rubenstein calls giving back “one of life’s greatest pleasures,” a sentiment he and Andrew Carnegie have in common. According to Carnegie, giving was not “beyond the reach of the humblest, for all can at least render to others.” Encouraging universal giving is one reason Mr. Rubenstein signed the Giving Pledge: “Everyone can and should give, and everyone can and should feel that their gifts may make the world a little bit better place.”

Unlike Carnegie, Mr. Feeney has always kept a low profile. He established Atlantic Philanthropies in 1982, and for years insisted that its grantmaking be done anonymously. In the mid-1980s, he quietly transferred virtually all of his assets to the foundation, which has since given billions in grants to education, health, peace, reconciliation, and human dignity—primarily for projects in Australia, Bermuda, Cuba, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United States, and Viet Nam. Although he owns neither a home nor a car, Mr. Feeney makes countless large investments to meet today’s urgent challenges, such as kick-starting universities across Ireland and propelling that country’s knowledge economy, and doing the same for the United States by seeding the creation of such institutions as Cornell NYC Tech to be a global magnet for tech talent.

Atlantic Philanthropies has also made big bets in public health and health sciences, including support for facilities at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as in Viet Nam, Australia, and South Africa, that support world-class research, innovation, and improved services for vulnerable populations. The foundation’s grantmaking reaches across age groups, and racial, ethnic, and sectarian divides—transforming the lives of vulnerable children by improving health outcomes; ending needless expulsions of students from school and reforming the criminal justice system; and fostering peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland and South Africa. All to promote equity, opportunity, and dignity. “Today’s needs are so great and varied that the intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater,” Mr. Feeney wrote. His actions prove he is a man of his word.

The story of the Wolfson family has much in common with the story of Andrew Carnegie. Born in 1897 to Eastern European Jews who immigrated to Scotland, Isaac Wolfson, the grandfather of Dame Janet, worked as a boy in his father’s store but in 1926 joined Universal Stores, a small mail-order company. Some six years later, Isaac Wolfson was managing director of what had become Great Universal Stores, and was by 1946 named chairman of the company, a position he held for thirty-eight years. But just as Carnegie said “surplus wealth should be considered a sacred trust, to be administered during the lives of its owners, by them as trustees for the best good of the community,” the man who was made a baronet in 1962 is famous for having said “No man should have more than ₤100,000. The rest should go to charity.” The Wolfson Foundation, which Sir Isaac founded in 1955 with his wife, Lady Edith Wolfson, and son Leonard (later Lord Wolfson of Marylebone), has given away—in 21st century figures—over ₤1 billion in support of science and medicine, health, education, and the arts and humanities.

Dame Janet Wolfson de Botton, revived the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy on behalf of the Wolfson Family. The philanthropic legacy of the Wolfson family is now being continued by Dame Janet Wolfson de Botton, a member of the third generation of the family to carry on the tradition of giving. She is a collector of contemporary art and was a Director of Christie’s International between 1994 and 1998, a trustee of the Tate Museum from 1992 to 2002, and the Chairman of Council for the Tate Modern from 1999 to 2002. In 1996 she donated sixty contemporary works of art to the Tate–a gift which has been described as being “crucial to the development of Tate Modern.”

Over the years, he has often quoted one of Andrew Carnegie’s most well-known and well-loved pronouncements: “The man who dies . . . rich dies disgraced.” And so, inspired by his countryman Andrew Carnegie and with a nudge from the current proprietor of the foundation Carnegie created, he followed Carnegie’s example and created—with his wife and advisor, Marion—the Hunter Foundation, supporting education as well as sustainable economic and social development around the world.

The Hunter Foundation takes an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy. Its stated mission is to eradicate poverty and to ensure access to education for all, but its strategy is to invest in model solutions, in partnership with others, leveraging its investments to inspire additional funding. This model of “pilot, prove, adopt” has been applied to launch many philanthropic initiatives in partnership with governments and other philanthropies. He used this approach of “catalytic funding” to move the Scottish government to match and exceed the funds he invested in some of Scotland’s lowest performing schools. The Hunter Foundation endowed the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Stratchclyde, from which he graduated with a degree in business, to support new generations of entrepreneurs. His commitment to eradicating poverty has found outlets in the Make Poverty History Campaign and Live 8. He found a partner in former U.S. President Bill Clinton and created the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative, an international education partnership to educate more than 200,000 children in Rwanda and Malawi each year.

In 2005, the man who built a business from the back of a van was knighted by the Queen. And as Sir Tom Hunter, he and Marion committed to the Giving Pledge, promising to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy, and not burden their children with affluence.

The list of initiatives Her Highness has spearheaded is long and paints a portrait of a remarkable woman. She is the chair of the world-renowned Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. As such, Her Highness is instrumental in Qatar’s development as a vanguard of social, economic, and technological advancement. As founder of the Shafallah Centre, she brought special education and dynamic new therapies to children with disabilities. Her Highness was the long-time chair of the Supreme Education Council, guiding Qatar’s education policies and reforms. In addition, she was the driving force behind the International Fund for Higher Education in Iraq, the Silatech initiative to address the growing challenge of youth employment in the Middle East and North Africa, and Education Above All, a policy research and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the right to education in conflict-affected areas.

Her Highness’s vision and leadership are further demonstrated by her creation of the Sidra Medical and Research Center, for which she serves as chair. The center will both prepare medical students and provide the finest healthcare available to the people of Qatar and the Gulf region. With a special emphasis on the health of women and children and with its cutting-edge research center, Sidra will transform the geography of medicine and improve health outcomes the world over.

But perhaps Her Highness’s most stunning accomplishment has been the creation of Education City, a consortium of world-renowned universities and research institutions that have made Doha their second home, including Virginia Commonwealth University, Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, and Northwestern University.

The world has taken notice of Sheikha Moza’s remarkable achievements, and in 2010 she was invited to be a member of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group, which addresses the issue of universal education. Two years later, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon invited Her Highness to be a member of the steering committee of the Global Education First Initiative.

In 2006, on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, Her Highness quoted Andrew Carnegie in her speech to the graduates. “He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.” She is an extraordinary exemplar of Carnegie’s pronouncement. Sheikha Moza is a leader for our times, who has made the future of her country the focus of her life. She has given generously of her time and resources to benefit Qatar, and we are all the richer for it.

Jim Simons is surely the first Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy recipient to have a theory in geometry named after him, and doubtless the only one who could explain the principles of “Chern-Simons theory.” Simons became a brilliant and renowned mathematician, teaching at MIT, serving as chair of the Mathematics Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and winning the field’s highest accolade, the Veblen Prize, in 1976. An extraordinary career in business followed an extraordinary career in academia. Using mathematical models and statistical methods, Simons started a private investment fund that skyrocketed to become one of the top-performing hedge funds in the world. Having worked as a mathematician, a professor, a cryptologist, and then a hedge fund manager, perhaps it was no surprise that he named the company Renaissance Technologies.

Jim Simons followed his careers in academia and in business with an exceptional third act: philanthropy. Together with his wife, Marilyn Simons, an economist he met at Stony Brook University, he founded The Simons Foundation, which Ms. Simons now runs. Their investments in mathematical and physical sciences, in life sciences, and in autism research have provided millions of dollars to provide a deeper understanding of our world. Ms. Simons has been, for twenty-five years, the steward and the shepherd of the Simons Foundation’s mission. She has overseen the growth of the Simons Foundation to its current position as one of the country’s leading private funders of basic research. Mr. and Ms. Simons also serve as benefactors to Stony Brook University, the Berkeley Institute, and others—all in the service of furthering the study and application of math and science in the United States.

Mr. Simons is also the driving force behind Math for America, an organization that seeks to improve the state of math education in America. His notion was that by providing training and mentoring to both prospective and veteran math teachers, he could recruit and retain a highly-qualified, highly-motivated, and highly-respected cadre of math and science teachers, who would in turn inspire and produce the next generation of engineers, analysts, and thinkers.

A physicist by education and a specialist in radio electronic technology, he began his business, VimpelCom, from scratch in 1992 and built it into one of the leading Russian wireless telecommunications companies. In 1996 VimpelCom became the first Russian company since 1903 to be listed on the New York State Exchange; its “BeeLine” cell phone service now has over 10 million subscribers in Russia.

At age 70, he decided to retire from active management of the company he built and used his experience and expertise to create the Dynasty Foundation. The Dynasty Foundation, which he founded and endowed, and for which he served as chairman for eight years, provides millions of dollars to support fundamental research in the exact and natural sciences. Though Dynasty’s focus is on the sciences, it also gives generously to groups working with at-risk children and their families to prevent adolescent homelessness.

Since its founding, the Dynasty Foundation has sought out and supported talented scientists, science teachers, science students, and science enthusiasts through generous grants, stipends, scholarships, competitions, lectures, seminars, and publications. The foundation sponsors grants competitions not only for students but also for math and science teachers, in order to reward and encourage outstanding work. He also created the aptly named “Enlightenment Prize,” which celebrates non-fiction literature in the natural sciences and in the humanities. He began a new popular science festival called ScienceArtFest to make science fun. The Dynasty Foundation has changed the landscape of science education in Russia.

He has said that “philanthropy is an inevitable process for a businessman. You have to give something back.” Andrew Carnegie would surely agree, and applaud the combination of business acumen and scientific inquiry that Dr. Zimin applied to his philanthropy. Like Andrew Carnegie, he retired from business and devoted himself to the “dissemination of knowledge and understanding.”