Ray Dolby as a PhD student in Cambridge in 1957 and in his London lab working on his invention called Dolby NR²

With success and prosperity came a passion for giving back. 

On her page for The Giving Pledge, Dagmar explains: ‘I am delighted to confirm my plans to devote the major part of my estate to charitable causes. This is a decision my late husband, Ray Dolby, and I made many years ago, and will enable our sons, Tom and David, and their families to carry on these efforts to improve our communities.’  

Dagmar’s understanding, commitment, and leadership across a broad range of philanthropic giving took expression at Cambridge in landmark gifts to benefit student life and physics. 

After Ray’s death in 2013, the Dolbys began an exceptionally meaningful philanthropic relationship with the Collegiate University that saw its inception in a 2015 gift of £35m from Ray’s estate to Pembroke College. This laid the foundation for creating new teaching, research and seminar spaces, and for building the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Court of graduate and undergraduate accommodation. The impact on future students is unequivocal: expanding the chance to learn, create, explore ideas, find inspiration, and ultimately bring what they have learned to the wider world.  

The then-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Leszek Borysiewicz, said: “Ray Dolby’s bequest is an eloquent statement of his devotion to the Collegiate University and all that it meant to him. This gift will create a spectacular setting where future students will benefit from the University’s education and begin to make their own mark in the world of innovation, as Ray did with such notable impact.” 

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the University, additional infrastructure investment was becoming necessary to maintain our world-leading position in physics and to encourage the finest minds in the discipline to relocate to—or stay in—the UK.  

Unconventional, unique, and remarkable minds. Just like Ray’s. 

The resonance was obvious, and the University worked in partnership with the Dolbys to address the gaps in an ambitious and visionary way.  

In 2017, the Dolbys gave the University of Cambridge what was then the largest philanthropic donation ever made to UK science, £85m, to revitalise and develop the Cavendish Laboratory as one of the greatest centres of physics research in the world.  

“The University of Cambridge played a pivotal role in Ray’s life, both personally and professionally,” affirmed Dagmar. “At Cambridge and at the Cavendish, he gained the formative education and insights that contributed greatly to his lifelong groundbreaking creativity and enabled him to start his business.”

“My father’s time at the Cavendish provided him with an environment where he got a world-class education in physics, and many of his successful ideas about noise reduction were stimulated by his Cambridge experience,” remarked David. “Our family is pleased to be able to support the future scientists and innovators who will benefit from the Ray Dolby Centre.” 

In 2022, the Dolbys gave a further £66m to support a new fund for teaching and research, the Dolby Family Fund for Excellence in Physics, to enable successful recruitment and retention of distinguished academics and the continuance of the department’s exemplary record in the hiring of women and people from minority backgrounds.  

Dagmar drove both stages of this plan in their many aspects, and her investment became the catalyst that launched the Cambridge Innovation District and is revitalising ‘Silicon Fen’. Already the University has been able to recruit Nobel Prize winners and enhance support for startups, driving both talent development and further infrastructure in the UK and the beginnings of an international powerhouse and hub for science research and innovation.

The opening of the new Centre coincides with changes in contemporary physics research, where there is vast new research potential at the interfaces between traditional areas of physics. It provides for a grouping of equipment and people into large and well-supported facilities where researchers can break down siloes, share insights and ideas, and establish cross-disciplinary physics work as the norm. The facilities will be open to researchers across the country.  

Working in this new way will enable a great diversity of projected breakthroughs: in ‘green tech’ with batteries that do not degrade; in the detection of galactic signatures of life; and even in quantum healthcare technology that can detect imbalances at an atomic scale in very localised parts of the human body. 

This once-in-a-generation opportunity emphasises Cambridge as a central driver of UK growth and innovation, ensuring the field of physics will meet and surpass our ambitions for the 21st century.

Professor Mete Atatüre and Professor Andy Parker at the opening of the Ray Dolby Centre, 9 May 2025