Lee Compton

A native Californian, Lee Compton earned an A.B. degree from Yale College, M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees from Caltech and did post-graduate work in Lausanne, Strasbourg, San Francisco and
Ithaca before settling in Manhattan for forty years, where he earned an M.B.A. from New York
University. He and his late wife, Lynn Toby Fisher, began visiting Tucson in 2006 and retired here
in 2019.

While in New York Lee served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the New York State
Center for Advanced Technology (Cornell Univ.), the New York Academy of Sciences Industrial
Policy and Infrastructure Study Panels and was a member of the Executive Committee of the
New York Biotechnology Association. He also served as Chair of the Executive Committee of the
New York Biodiversity Research Institute.

For sixteen years he served his Manhattan community as Board Chair or Chair of the Chelsea
Land Use Committee of Manhattan Community Board No.4. He served as a member of the
board of the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation and was the City Council
Chair’s appointee to the High Line Steering Committee.

In 2019 he and Lynn established the Lynn Toby Fisher and John Lee Compton Enrichment Award
to fund small projects by Honors College students. In 2023 he established the Compton Chair
for Creative Intelligence and Innovation Endowment and the Compton Fund for Exploration with
the goals of enriching the teaching and practice of creativity and innovation at the Franke
Honors College and encouraging Franke students to “try something different.”
He is Chair of the Central Tucson Council of UA’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is a
supporter of the education programs of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and SARSEF.
Lee is an avid amateur photographer, which he combines with his love of the Sonoran Desert
and travel. He is passionate about the preservation and enlightened use of natural and cultural
resources, and about the value of education as preparation to be an effective citizen of a
challenged and changing world.