In fact, the Australian National University law and economics graduate and international commodities trader knows it.

He made Australian philanthropic history in February when he announced he would donate $50 million of his estimated $775 million personal fortune to setting up the antipodean version of the Rhodes Scholarship through a $100,000 Tuckwell scholarship for 25 ANU undergraduates each year.

But Mr Tuckwell's record-breaking gift was pipped in August when Queensland property developer Clive Berghofer gave $50.1 million to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. And that, in turn, was topped by a donation of $65 million from mining magnate Andrew Forrest to universities across Western Australia.

Speaking from London on Thursday night, Mr Tuckwell said Mr Forrest - a good friend - had called him to say his $50 million donation had inspired Mr Forrest and his wife Nicola to make their $65 million gift to higher education and research in WA.

As for the Berghofer donation, Mr Tuckwell noted that the $50.1 million figure seemed rather pointed, and his own financial pledge would amount to considerably more than $50 million over time as it was funded in perpetuity, pegged to inflation and was worth ''an infinite amount''.

But in the end, the more money being donated to higher education in Australia, the better, he said.

Mr Tuckwell and his wife Louise were on Thursday evening awarded the Business/Higher Education Round Table (B-HERT) Award for Outstanding Philanthropic Support of Higher Education.

Meanwhile, ANU vice-chancellor Ian Young has dedicated $500,000 in university funding to award 100 Centenary Scholarships to those who were shortlisted for the Tuckwell Scholarship but who missed out. The Centenary Scholarships are worth $5000 each.

More than 650 year 12 graduates from across the nation applied for the Tuckwell Scholarship, which is one of the most generous in the country - providing $25,000 each year for five years of study for 25 students.

Just over 200 students were shortlisted and 72 were invited to Canberra for interviews with Mr Tuckwell and a selection panel including Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Brian Schmidt.

Professor Young said the field of applicants had been amazing and the ANU was keen to encourage them to enrol under the Centenary Scholarship. ''The students shortlisted for the Tuckwell Scholarship are exactly the sort of students we want at ANU - outstanding, talented and passionate young people who will change the world,'' he said.

The university will write in the coming week to the first 100 shortlisted students who did not receive either a Tuckwell or another ANU scholarship.

Professor Young believed the cost of relocating from interstate to Canberra could be a barrier for some students settling on ANU and this would help cover those costs.

A notoriously private man, Mr Tuckwell has eschewed all lavish signs of wealth and stipulated his scholarships would go to hard-working students willing to give of themselves for their community, rather than ''hot-housed'' bright kids.

''I suppose I could have bought a yacht and then sat on it … Or I could have spent it on fancy holidays, and alienated myself from my friends - or bought half a dozen houses. But then how could I sit in church every Sunday?'' he said at the time he went public with his donation.

Mr Tuckwell said on Thursday he believed he had helped change the culture in Australian business to better recognise the importance of philanthropy.

''I think chief executives shouldn't be spending money buying toys, and a far more productive use of money is to fund education,'' he said.

Mr Tuckwell and his wife, who live in Jersey, the British crown dependency off the coast of Normandy, will travel to Canberra twice a year for a commencement dinner at the beginning of each new intake and for interviews of shortlisted candidates in the middle of the year.