Hub's good fortune

You can't take it with you.

For most of us, this is just a cold fact with no real impact beyond family circles. The planet's richest people think about the future of their billions differently.

Bill Gates, still the world's wealthiest person, according to the latest Forbes billionaires list, is famously up to his eyeballs in global philanthropy. Warren Buffett, his pal and the world's second-richest person, will let Gates decide how to give his money away.

And then there's Sheldon Adelson, sixth on the global list of richest people but third among Americans with a net worth estimated at $26 billion. Adelson, 73, made most of his billions in the Las Vegas desert, but the people planning how to spend some of that fortune are working in the Boston area. One new foundation in Boston is focused on medical research, and another, based in Natick, is dedicated to Jewish philanthropy. Both appear to have big mandates.

This is money and ambition coming full circle, in a sense. Adelson, the chairman and majority owner of Las Vegas Sands Inc., has gigantic financial bets flung across the globe in places like China and the Philippines. But Adelson got his very first taste of commerce, at age 12, selling newspapers in Dorchester on the corner of Talbot and Blue Hill avenues. The third-richest man in America was part of a family of six living in a one-room apartment in those days, according to lore.

Adelson ran his first real business, a candy vending machine operation in Brockton, a few years later, at age 16, more than a decade before Buffett realized there was an opportunity down the road in New Bedford at a beleaguered manufacturer called Berkshire Hathaway. Among Adelson's many subsequent ventures, some flourished, others didn't, and one literally burned to the ground.

By any reasonable standard, Adelson was already very rich by the time he grew The Interface Group, a convention and trade show business in Needham, into an industry player with hundreds of millions in sales in the late 1980s. That's when he bought the Las Vegas Sands and built it into a giant that made him very rich by all the unreasonable standards of the super-wealthy.

Most of Adelson's net worth is based on his 69 percent interest in Las Vegas Sands, a publicly traded company whose shares have climbed about 140 percent since the fall of 2005 on enthusiasm for its Asian expansion plans. The stock hit an air pocket recently, dropping about 20 percent since January, but Adelson still has many more billions than he could possibly spend. For that, there's a plan.

The Sheldon and Miriam Adelson Medical Research Foundation set up shop in Boston and hired Jeffrey Gelfand , a doctor with extensive medical research and academic experience, to run it. In a television interview a few months ago, Adelson said he hoped his legacy would involve curing disease and was prepared to spend billions toward that goal.

Like Michael Milken's medical research philanthropy, Adelson's foundation demands that researchers be prepared to share information and collaborate.

Last month, the Adelson Family Charitable Foundation was organized to award grants to Jewish philanthropies. Michael Bohnen , a longtime corporate attorney at Nutter, McLennan & Fish, left his job to become president of the foundation in Natick. Media reports in Israel and elsewhere said the foundation intended to give away $200 million a year, but Bohnen declined to comment on any target.

Adelson donated $25 million to Yad Vashem , a Holocaust memorial, last fall and contributed $30 million earlier this year to Birthright Israel , an organization that helps Jews who have never visited Israel travel there.

Sheldon Adelson has piled up a lot of money in a long career. He's not sitting on it.

Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com.