Medicine: Father to Son

One of the world’s wealthiest, least understood and least publicized organizations for seeking out scientific knowledge got a new boss last week. Down from the presidency of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research stepped John Davison Rockefeller Jr., 76, to make way for a younger man. The younger man: his youngest son, David, 35, onetime secretary to New York City’s late Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. In World War II he rose from private to captain, is now a vice president of the Chase National Bank.

Just 50 years ago John D. Rockefeller Sr. became convinced that medical science in the U.S. was lagging behind other sciences because most researchers were doctors who had to take time out for patients and teaching. His answer to this problem was a foundation for pure medical research, to be staffed by top-notch scientists working full time. It has since been endowed with 60 million Rockefeller dollars.

The institute’s works, often in obscure fields, have mostly been hidden from the public, which has sometimes benefited only indirectly. Example: at the institute in Manhattan, overlooking the East River, famed Microbiologist René J. Dubos first encouraged bacteria to produce poisons to wipe out other bacteria. Dubos’ early antibiotics proved of limited value, but his theory and practice are the foundation on which most of the lifesaving science of antibiotics has been reared. It was also at the institute that the late Alexis Carrel, keeping a piece of chicken heart “alive” under glass, added to man’s knowledge of the tissues which make up the human body.