Yale president Peter Salovey wrote about Swensen’s death in a statement Thursday, saying that Swensen died following “a long and courageous battle with cancer.”Swensen graduated from Yale with a Ph.D. in economics in 1980 and then worked briefly at Wall Street investment banks Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers before returning to Yale in 1985 as head of the Ivy League school’s investment office. Under Swensen’s management, the endowment fund grew to more than $31 billion as of 2020 to become