MINING billionaire Andrew Forrest has gifted a staggering $65 million - believed to be the nation's largest single philanthropic donation - to attract the world's best minds to Western Australia's universities.

About $50 million from the chairman of Fortescue Metals Group will be used to establish the Forrest Foundation, to fund scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships across all five of WA's universities.

And another $15 million will build Forrest Hall, at St George's College at the University of Western Australia (UWA), a living space for researchers that is hoped will rival the best residential colleges in the world.

The gift will be the centrepiece of the UWA's new fundraising campaign, which aims to raise $400 million and we will be launched on Tuesday with a gala dinner attended by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Mr Forrest, who graduated from UWA in 1983, said he wanted to use his money to invest in the country and its young people.

"Only education can be the final key to eliminate poverty in the world and raise the universal standard of living, ultimately to increase the nobility of the human cause," he said.

"Having visited so many of them, I believe the University of Western Australia is an excellent example of what our universities can grow to."

The donation is part of a previous pledge by Mr Forrest and his wife Nicola to give away half of his estimated US$5.3 billion fortune, as part of the "Giving Pledge" movement founded by American billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.

It follows other big donations from the couple including $3 million to the Art Gallery of WA, $3.7 million that was shared between the WA Symphony Orchestra, WA Opera and the Black Swan State Theatre Centre, and $1.3 million to Murdoch University's Institute for Immunology and Infectious Diseases.

Dr Michael Chaney, UWA Chancellor, said the gift would transform the college.

"It's going to help us create the future by enabling us to gear up our research effort as we move into our second century," Dr Chaney said.

The university's fundraising campaign aims to fund future student scholarships, new research and a new indigenous cultures museum.

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