Magnate

Singer Art Garfunkel, a real estate magnate and an investor are putting $2 million in gold bullion on the line to inspire researchers to cure blindness by 2020, establishing through Johns Hopkins Medicine one of the world's largest prizes for a scientific advancement. The men, one-time roommates at Columbia University, intend for the prize to trigger research into the variety of diseases that cause blindness — 80 percent of which are preventable — in 39 million people around the world.

Robb Tyler, whose slogan "We Never Refuse Refuse" helped make him the largest trash hauler in the Baltimore area in the 1960s, died Saturday at his Caribbean winter home in Providentiales, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. He was 84.Mr. Tyler, who died of heart failure, was cremated yesterday in Miami. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. today at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Boyce and Carrollton avenues in Ruxton.A Baltimore native, Mr. Tyler attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and started in business by opening several gas stations in Baltimore.

Chicken magnate Frank Perdue has joined an investment group that owns two minor-league baseball teams in Maryland and hopes to locate a third in the poultry producer's back yard on the Eastern Shore.Peter Kirk, chairman of Maryland Baseball Limited Partnership, said yesterday that Perdue would not be involved in the daily operations of baseball teams that the group owns in Frederick and Bowie. He wouldn't disclose the amount of money that Perdue has invested.Kirk did describe Perdue as "a longtime baseball enthusiast," and said he's keenly interested in returning a minor-league franchise to the Eastern Shore.

COLLEGE PARK -- Construction magnate A. James Clark has promised to give $15 million to the engineering school at the University of Maryland, the largest private donation, by far, to a public university in the state.The money comes from a 1950 graduate who attended the engineering school on a state scholarship and went on to make a fortune constructing buildings on campus and across the nation.News of the gift, announced yesterday at a post-commencementceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the engineering school, left a group of about 100 faculty and students in stunned silence.

On a trip to the Northwest this summer, we would like to see the large home that Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, has built near Seattle. Can we see it from the street?From George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., to William Randolph Hearst's castle in San Simeon, Calif., the homes of America's rich have long fascinated travelers. But there's no reason to bother Gates' neighbors if you want to gawk at his 37,000-square-foot house, which is estimated to have cost as much as $35 million.

NOTEworthy Day:Annapolis is the latest Maryland community to be eyed by Peter Kirk, owner of the Frederick and Hagerstown franchises, for a minor-league team (Triple A classification) and there is even talk of plans, as incongruous as it seems, for putting a club in Memorial Stadium after the Orioles move to their new facility. Also a long shot is a minor-league representative for Washington, which would be a crowning insult to a city that deserves only the majors. Notre Dame linebacker Mike Stonebreaker, born in Baltimore when his father, Steve, was with the Colts, has a distinguished baptismal godfather, a Hall of Fame quarterback named John Unitas . . . The Senior Golf tour is an overwhelming success but some (not all)

If Bill Gates wrote an advice column:Dear Bill,I'm crushed. My best friend "Debbie' is getting married. Naturally, I assumed I'd be the maid of honor. But I just found out Debbie has asked someone else, a heavyset woman on our softball team in need of a depilatory for her mustache.I feel hurt and insulted. Now I wonder if I should attend the wedding at all.-- Steamed% in Steubenville, OhioDear Steamed: I, too, was once left out of a friend's wedding party. I sat down at my PC for 36 hours straight and streamlined my CONFIG.

It wasn't the typical way to make $2.4 million: clipping and redeeming tens of thousands of price-chopping coupons that knock 50 cents off a loaf of bread or $1 off a box of detergent.But according to FBI and IRS agents, that's how the president of a once-thriving Maryland supermarket chain illegally made part of his fortune.An indictment filed this week in U.S. District Court in Baltimore charges Jack I. Millman with redeeming coupons that customers never turned in. The indictment alleges he paid people to clip coupons for dozens of products and turned them in himself, claiming that people had bought the items at one of his 10 Farm Fresh stores.

MOSCOW - Russia's wealthiest man was denied bail yesterday when a court ruled against him during a closed hearing in Moscow. A new Russian law permits the granting of bail, but the court apparently feared that oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky might flee the country. He faces seven criminal counts - including fraud, forgery and tax evasion - and the government had frozen his shares in the oil company he once headed as a hedge against possible fines and tax penalties. Many observers believe that the charges are politically motivated.

WASHINGTON -- Abe Hirschfeld, the New York City parking garage magnate who tried to ride to the rescue in ending Paula Corbin Jones' lawsuit against President Clinton, said yesterday that he was withdrawing his offer to pay Jones $1 million to settle the case.He said his efforts were over, finished, off the table and not to be renewed.Hirschfeld blamed feuding among Jones' lawyers about how to apportion the money for his decision to rescind the offer.The real estate tycoon has his own legal problems.