The philanthropist behind the new Jewish Community Centre for London has pledged £8.2 million towards a range of British cultural and education programmes.

Dame Vivien Duffield said she wanted her donation, which comes amid 40 per cent funding cuts to the Arts Council England, to help ensure culture would be “at the heart of our children's learning."

Albert Einstein’s 132nd birthday has been marked with the announcement that from next year his work will be accessible online in a comprehensive archive.

The Noble-prize winning physicist, who died in 1955, left his entire body of research – more than 80,000 documents and papers - to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

The founders of Google and Hungarian-born financier George Soros are among the 50 richest people on the planet.

Forbes magazine has released its annual list of the world’s billionaires, topped for the second consecutive year by Mexico’s Carlos Slim.

The highest placed Jewish person on the list was Larry Ellison, the founder of software communications company Oracle.

Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros has topped a list of the most generous American philanthropists over the last year.

Mr Soros, who was born in Hungary, donated or pledged to donate £205 million in 2010.

The money will go to Human Rights Watch and to other organisations under the umbrella of his Open Society Foundations.

Last year he appeared at sixth on the list, compiled annually by the Chronicle of Philanthropy magazine.

Other Jewish men and women in the top ten included New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

A Jewish businessman has announced a £10 million donation to the National Theatre.

The gift, from Travelex founder Lloyd Dorfman, will go towards the theatre’s Future redevelopment fund.

Mr Dorfman, 57, has been involved in the National Theatre, on London’s South Bank, for several years and is a member of its board.

The Cottesloe Theatre will be renamed the Dorfman Theatre to mark the donation.

Fashion designer Ralph Lauren is to be given the key to New York City.

Mr Lauren is to receive the prestigious gold plated key today – his 71st birthday.

The key will be handed to him by Mayor Michael Bloomberg during a ceremony at Manhattan’s newest Ralph Lauren clothes store.

The Jewish businessman, born Ralph Rueben Lifshitz to immigrants from Belarus, is the first fashion designer to receive the symbolic honour.

Mr Lauren, a prominent philanthropist who has funded The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention since 2001, is worth an estimated £2.9 billion.

A Chilean Jewish businessman has announced that he is donating more than £6,000 to each of the 33 miners trapped underneath the Atacama Desert.

Leonardo Farkas, a philanthropist with stakes in the mining industry, has written cheques in each of the trapped miners’ names. The 53-year-old, who is of Hungarian descent, has also launched a fund for others to donate to.

In 2008 Mr Farkas gave nearly £100,000 to a children’s charity.

Nineteen men have been pulled out of the San Jose gold and copper mine so far, which lies 7000m below the ground. The ordeal has lasted 69 days.

When Harry Met Sally star Billy Crystal has been described as “a real mensch” after he made a large donation to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

The American Jewish actor, 62, has given a “substantial” amount to the institution’s Peace through the Performing Arts programme, which has run projects uniting Israeli and Palestinian students for more than a decade.

Billionaire financier George Soros is giving £65 million to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based organisation dedicated to investigating human rights abuses.

HRW has criticised both Israel and Hamas in its reports in the past. At the beginning of this year, its programmes director Ian Levine met Jewish communal leaders in London in an effort to convince them that the organisation was not biased against Israel.