The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

SAMUEL ROBERTS NOBLE FOUNDATION.

Oklahoma oilman Lloyd Noble established the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation at Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1945 as a resource to educate and assist area farmers and ranchers to maintain effective use of land. Named in honor of Lloyd Noble's father, the foundation was still managed by the Noble family as one of the largest philanthropic foundations in Oklahoma at the turn of the twenty-first century. The growth of the Noble Foundation has remained focused on agriculture, although it has developed several divisions to complete its mission. The administrative division manages the entire foundation as well as making grants that have totaled more than $500 million to a wide range of cultural and educational entities. Established in 1952, the biomedical division for research on cell nutrition and cancer cell metabolism was relocated to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City in 1992. The agricultural division carries on the original educational and assistance activities of the foundation by serving a forty-seven-county area within a one-hundred-mile radius of Ardmore. The area includes counties in Texas as well as Oklahoma. The plant biology division, created in 1988, does basic research for crop improvement, and the forage improvement division, started in 1996, develops new varieties of animal forage for farmers and ranchers. More than 280 employees work in the foundation's various divisions.

Bobby D. Weaver