A Providence-based philanthropy has donated $100 million to Brown University to enlarge, enhance and rename its medical school — a gift that university and public officials say will send benefits cascading to the entire state.

The money, from the Warren Alpert Foundation, will bolster the 35-year-old medical school’s stature, most likely attracting top researchers and doctors to care for sick Rhode Islanders and to fuel the state’s growing biotechnology industry.

Brown Medical School is now to be called the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, after the businessman and owner of the Xtra Mart convenience stores. The Warren Alpert Foundation gives grants for medical education and research, and bestows an annual award on a top medical researcher.

The donation is the largest the foundation has ever given, and the largest Brown’s medical school has ever received. It will pay for a new building to house the medical school in South Providence, scholarships for medical students, two endowed professorships, faculty recruitment and biomedical research.

“We hope to build this into one of the great medical schools in the country,” said Herbert Kaplan, president of the Warren Alpert Foundation.

“The scope of the gift is so significant that it will affect virtually every dimension of the medical school,” said Ruth J. Simmons, Brown University president.

“You can do a lot with a $100 million,” Simmons said. “A gift of this magnitude invested over time will grow immensely. It will result in the future in very significant advances in medical education and medical care in the state.” Additionally, by raising the school’s visibility, the donation will make it easier to attract additional grants from other sources, Simmons said.

“It’s huge. It’s very, very exciting,” said Governor Carcieri, who learned of the gift late last week. “This is a key part of our whole economic development strategy — to position ourselves as a leader in aspects of life sciences where there is real expertise here.”

Brown’s benefactor, Warren Alpert, is the founder, chairman and sole owner of Warren Equities Inc., a company that he started in 1950 in Providence. Born in Chelsea, Mass., the youngest of five children of Lithuanian immigrants, Alpert served in military intelligence during World War II and won the Purple Heart for his actions on Omaha Beach.

Alpert has said that he started Warren Equities with “$1,000 and a used car,” in a building on Eddy Street heated by a coal stove. Today, Warren Equities sells fuel and groceries in more than 400 Xtra Mart convenience stores in the Northeast, and has interests in real estate and transportation, posting more than $1 billion in sales each year.

“Warren Alpert had always been fascinated with medical education,” said Kaplan, who is president and CEO of Warren Equities as well as foundation president. “He never wanted to be a doctor himself, but he always thought that was the way to help mankind.”

In addition to the annual Alpert Prize, honoring a medical researcher, Alpert’s foundation has made major donations to Harvard Medical School and to hospitals and universities elsewhere in the country. Until now its contributions to Brown have been small – “in the area of $10,000 a year,” Kaplan said.

But as Kaplan tells it, Alpert had a longstanding friendship with Brown’s vice president of development, Neil D. Steinberg, a former banker. In discussing possible donations, Kaplan says he asked Steinberg about “a naming opportunity.”

“He came back in probably a month,” Kaplan said. “He said, ‘We would name the medical school.’ That was a shock.”

Although his business and foundation are based in Providence, Alpert, 86, lives in New York. He is currently ill and unavailable to participate in interviews or other events surrounding the donation, Kaplan said.

The Warren Alpert Foundation gift provides a huge boost to two efforts already under way at Brown. The university is in the midst of a campaign to raise $1.4 billion. The Alpert Foundation gift brings the campaign total to $935 million.

And since 2004, Brown has been working to beef up its programs in medicine and life sciences. It has hired 19 new tenure-track professors in the biological sciences, public health and medicine and plans to hire 20 more. Brown has opened two major new buildings dedicated to biomedical research, on campus and in the Jewelry District. The medical school is also increasing the class size by 30 percent, hoping to have 400 medical students by 2011.

The Alpert Foundation gift will help on several levels. First, it will give the medical school a home. Today, someone looking for the Brown Medical School wouldn’t be able to find it — medical instruction occurs in scattered locations on campus and at its seven affiliated hospitals.

“Brown Medical School is at this point a homeless institution,” said Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, dean of medicine and biological sciences.

The new school will be built on or near the campuses of Rhode Island Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital, or in the Jewelry District, Adashi said. A specific site has yet to be identified. Being close to the main teaching hospitals will benefit both the students and the hospital-based faculty, he said.

The foundation’s gift includes an endowment to establish the Warren Alpert Scholars Program, which will provide scholarships to medical students. This will help the school’s efforts to attract more students. Also, Simmons said, the scholarships will give students more freedom in choosing their specialty. Many choose higher paid specialties so they can pay off the huge debt burden — sometimes $100,000 or more — that medical students face when they graduate. With scholarships, more students may feel they can afford to practice primary care, Simmons said.

The gift also includes two new endowed professorships, an endowment to support faculty-designed innovations in medical education, and a fund for faculty recruitment. In the sciences, Dean Adashi said, the process of bringing one new professor on board can cost well over $1 million, including lab equipment, relocation costs and startup salary.

The Alpert donation also includes money for biomedical research.

“It puts yet another stamp of recognition on a school that is still clearly growing and building its national and international reputation,” Adashi said of the gift. “And when somebody makes such a bold move, it is a vote of confidence.”

“This truly is a transformational gift,” said George A. Vecchione, president and chief executive officer of the Lifespan hospital group, which includes Rhode Island Hospital, Brown’s main teaching affiliate. “This is a stellar day not only for the university and medical school but also for the state of Rhode Island.”

Vecchione noted that in the days before the medical school, which graduated its first class in 1975, Rhode Islanders often went out of state for medical care. Now the out-of-staters come here, he said. The presence of the medical school “just elevates the entire practice of medicine over time” and strengthening the medical school can only raise it higher, he said.

Providence Mayor David Cicilline applauded the economic benefits expected when scientific discoveries lead to spinoff businesses. “Warren Alpert’s generous gift will ultimately lead to new entrepreneurial activity, new businesses and new growth in the City of Providence,” the mayor said in a statement.

ffreyer@projo.com