ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY is a world-renowned center for research and graduate education in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, and physics, located in New York City. It was founded in 1901 as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller. Over the course of a century, Rockefeller scientists received twenty-one Nobel Prizes for achievements such as revealing the microscopic structures inside cells, discovering the Rh factor in blood, developing novel methods for synthesizing proteins, and uncovering the workings of chemical transmitters in the brain.

The Rockefeller Institute was modeled on European research centers such as the Koch Institute, where in the late nineteenth century scientists had identified the bacterial causes of many infectious diseases. But the Rockefeller Institute's mission under its first director, Simon Flexner, was broader than bacteriology. Flexner created laboratories in chemistry, physiology, and other areas, each headed by an independent investigator, to study the underlying causes of disease. This administrative structure, of independent laboratories reporting directly to the institution's head, has remained in place throughout Rockefeller's history. In 1906, the institute's permanent laboratories opened at York Avenue and Sixty-Sixth Street in New York City.

In 1910, Rockefeller Hospital opened, the first hospital in the United States devoted completely to clinical research. Here physician-researchers combined the care of patients with laboratory investigation of disease. Polio, heart disease, and diabetes were among the first diseases studied. Dedication to studying the basic biology and chemistry of disease was rewarded in 1944 with one of the most dramatic scientific discoveries of the century: Oswald T. Avery and colleagues, in the course of searching for a cure for pneumococcal pneumonia, found that DNA carries genetic information. Rockefeller Hospital was a model for dozens of clinical research centers in university hospitals and elsewhere in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Always a center for postdoctoral training in the sciences, the Rockefeller Institute expanded and formalized its commitment to education under its third president, Detlev Bronk. In 1955, the first class of students was admitted into a new Ph.D. program. In 1965, the institute officially became Rockefeller University, and in the early 1970s, a M.D.–Ph.D. program was launched with Cornell University Medical College, now called Weill Medical College. The participation of the Sloan-Kettering Institute made the M.D.–Ph.D. program tri-institutional.

The transition from institute to university was also marked by expansion, both in size and in the areas of research supported. Physicists and mathematicians joined the faculty, as well as researchers studying animal behavior. As of 2002, there were seventy-five laboratories at the university, and approximately 160 Ph.D. and M.D.–Ph.D. students. The university draws from a diverse base of financial support, including its endowment, private gifts, and sponsored government and private contracts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Corner, George W. A History of the Rockefeller Institute, 1901– 1953: Origins and Growth. New York: Rockefeller Institute Press, 1965.

Hanson, Elizabeth. The Rockefeller University Achievements: A Century of Science for the Benefit of Humankind, 1901–2001. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 2000.

ElizabethHanson

See alsoEducation, Higher: Colleges and Universities ; Medical Education ; Medical Research ; Science Education .

Rockefeller Institute. Founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller Sr., the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research initially provided grants to scientific investigators at various institutions.The institute moved to Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1906 with the construction of its first permanent laboratory. A research hospital was built in 1910, the first such American facility dedicated to experimental medicine.

Rockefeller's two main advisers, his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Frederick T. Gates, convinced that philanthropy had a vital role in promoting the benefits of science and medicine, were determined to create a research institute of international caliber. Initially pledging $20,000 a year over a ten‐year period, Rockefeller added an additional $2.6 million in 1907 and $3.8 million in 1910. Reflecting European research models, the Rockefeller Institute was organized under the directorship of Simon Flexner around senior investigators and their laboratories rather than by academic departments. This afforded researchers the freedom to cross disciplinary boundaries freely in the course of their investigations. Such diverse fields as cellular and molecular biology, infectious diseases, genetics, biochemistry, neurobiology, immunology, mathematics, physics, and behavioral sciences have all been studied at Rockefeller.

The institute became a graduate degree–granting institution in 1954 and in 1965 changed its name to Rockefeller University. The university and its hospital have been at the forefront of research in numerous medical areas including the identification of human blood groups, the production of antibiotics, and the study of aging, diabetes, heart disease, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and genetic disorders. Twenty Nobel laureates have been associated with the institution.
See also Biological Sciences; Disease; Genetics and Genetic Engineering; Hospitals; Mathematics and Statistics; Medical Education; Medicine: From the 1870s to 1945; Medicine: Since 1945; Physical Sciences; Science: From 1914 to 1945; Science: Since 1945.

Bibliography

George W. Corner , A History of the Rockefeller Institute, 1901–1953: Origins and Growth, 1964.

Lee R. Hiltzik

Rockefeller University philanthropic organization in New York City, founded 1901 as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research by John D. Rockefeller for furthering medical science and its allied subjects and to make knowledge of these subjects available to the public. Many millions of dollars allocated to the institute by its founder and members of his family enabled it to develop into one of the principal research organizations in the United States. Its first laboratory was opened in 1904; its hospital, established for the study of human diseases, opened in 1910. Two main departments were also organized—the departments of animal pathology (1914) and plant pathology (1931). The institute later added programs in the behavioral sciences, mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In 1954 the institute, becoming part of the Univ. of the State of New York, took on the status of a graduate university with authority to grant advanced degrees. In 1958 it became the Rockefeller Institute, and in 1965 its present name was adopted. Research projects in the biological and biomedical sciences are continually under way, including a program of advanced study in collaboration with the medical school of Cornell. The university publishes several journals as well as conference reports and monographs.