June 8, 2008
Howard Hughes: Patron Of Science?
Medical Research Institute Is America's Second Largest Charity
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Howard Hughes' Lasting Gift
The late billionaire's money is being used to probe life's medical mysteries through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, America's second largest charity. Lesley Stahl reports.
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Howard Hughes (CBS)
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Photo Essay
The Real Aviator
The life and career of pilot and industrialist Howard Hughes
“To take risks in the sense, not just of doing something that has a low probability of succeeding, but in terms of thinking about the big problems, such as, you know, ‘How does memory work?’ and, ‘How does the brain accomplish decision-making,'" Cech says.
“It'd be wrong to pretend that I was in any way like Galileo. But it is true that the Medici Family supported investigators like Galileo, to allow them the freedom to explore things which they couldn't otherwise do,” says Melton. “And that's how I like to think of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It allows us the freedom to explore things that we wouldn't otherwise do.”
As the Institute supports more and more explorations like Melton's, history may begin to remember Howard Hughes differently, not just as a bizarre billionaire, or just as a pilot and a playboy, but as a great, if accidental, patron of science.
In May, The Howard Hughes Institute announced a massive infusion of funds, $600 million, into its pool of endowments. The new money will fund 56 additional scientists working in a variety of medical fields including genetics. One question to be studied: is climate change affecting the spread of cholera and malaria.
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Posted by NPR_OPOGANDA at 10:05 AM : Jun 09, 2008
University endowments are typically used for things such as buildings (infrastructure) and retention/recruitment packages for faculty, rather than yearly research costs. NIH isn''t going to pony up $100 million for a new biology building. The biomedical researchers are basically self-employed in a sense and are expected to compete for their research dollars at NIH (and other funding agencies) rather than expecting the universities to give it to them from their endowments. I think this is appropriate since all grant applications to NIH or NSF (for example) undergo rigorous peer-review, ensuring only the best proposals get funded (~10-15% these days). This wouldn''t happen if universities gave professors access to their endowments. So yes, Harvard is obscenely wealthy... but it also has a pretty good track record of accomplishment and is arguably the best university in the world.