When progressives on Harvard’s campus rage against the “1 percenters”, perhaps they might to consider that some of their patrons fall into that category.

In fact, a noted hedge fund manager just gave the school its biggest donation in history.

Hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin, a 1989 graduate of Harvard University, gave his alma mater $150 million on Wednesday, the largest gift in the school’s history.

The gift is largely earmarked for financial aid and is expected to help as many as 800 undergraduates annually.

Mr. Griffin, who started his career as an investor from his dorm room at Harvard, founded Citadel in 1990 and has become a prominent philanthropist in Chicago, where the company is based.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr. Griffin said he made the donation because he considered Harvard’s need-blind admissions policy “a matter of principle.”

“I was fortunate to have a relative to ease the burden of going to Harvard,” Mr. Griffin said. “For a lot of students who are affected by financial aid at Harvard, that’s just not a reality.”

Mr. Griffin, 45 years old, has built Citadel into one of the largest hedge-fund firms in the world.

Citadel grew steadily for nearly two decades to manage $20 billion in assets before steep losses during the financial crisis cut the firm’s size nearly in half. Thanks to several years of strong performance for its funds, however, Citadel has since climbed back to $17 billion.

Mr. Griffin said he hopes to donate more to Harvard in the coming years and called for his peers to consider doing the same.

“At Harvard, we’ve had not decades of commitment from our alumni, but centuries. It’s time for my generation to step up,” he said. …Mr. Griffin’s donation comes in addition to the 11.3% return Harvard earned last year on its endowment, which was valued at $32.7 billion in September.

In recognition of Mr. Griffin’s gift, Harvard will rename their financial-aid office after him. The donation also includes $10 million to establish the Griffin Professorship of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

In a statement Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said the gift would open Harvard University’s gates wider to the most talented students in the world no matter their economic circumstances.