Growth: 1984-1992

Since Mr. Hughes did not name a successor trustee, the Delaware Court of Chancery designates eight prominent citizens as trustees of the Institute and provides for the eight to elect a ninth. The new trustees meet for the first time on May 29. They elect Dr. Thorn as chairman and Dr. Fredrickson, former director of the National Institutes of Health, as president. (Dr. Fredrickson had joined HHMI in 1983 as a vice president.) In September the trustees elect Frank A. Petito, chairman of James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated and retired chairman of Morgan Stanley & Co., to become their ninth member.

The original trustees are:

• Helen K. Copley
• Donald S. Fredrickson, M.D.
• Frank William Gay
• James H. Gilliam, Jr., Esq.
• Hanna H. Gray, Ph.D.
• William R. Lummis, Esq.
• Irving S. Shapiro, Esq.
• George W. Thorn, M.D.

Congress designates a former convent on the grounds of the National Institutes of Health as the Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education (informally known as the Cloister). NIH and HHMI plan a research training program for medical students centered at the Cloister, to be called the HHMI-NIH Research Scholars Program. Each year, up to 40 students are to be selected to work in the Bethesda laboratories of NIH scientists.

Early in the year, the Trustees decide to sell the Hughes Aircraft Company. On December 20, in one of the largest business transactions in history, General Motors Corporation buys the huge defense contractor, establishing the Institute's endowment at approximately $5 billion. A major research expansion is foreseen.

During the process of selling the Hughes Aircraft Company, the trustees reaffirm the Institute's status as a medical research organization, thereby declining to transform it into a private foundation.

The trustees elect Purnell W. Choppin, M.D. vice president and chief scientific officer. He had been a member of The Rockefeller University since 1959 and, most recently, Leon Hess Professor of Virology, vice president for academic programs, and dean of graduate studies. Graham O. Harrison, president of the U.S. Steel pension fund, is elected vice president and chief investment officer, and Robert C. White, assistant treasurer of Ford Motor Company, is elected vice president and chief financial officer.

A groundbreaking ceremony is held for Hughes House.

HHMI transfers administrative functions from Florida to Maryland, drawn by the proximity to NIH and other centers of research administration. Headquarters are established in Bethesda on Old Georgetown Road and later on Rockledge Drive.

A formal research program is established in structural biology, which seeks to explain the activities of proteins and other biologically important molecules in terms of their atomic structure. The Institute is now conducting research in five main areas: cell biology and regulation, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, and structural biology.

An Informational Forum on the Human Genome is held at NIH. HHMI plays a critical role in this fledgling global enterprise to map and sequence all human genes. Under the direction of Dr. George Cahill, who is now HHMI's vice president for scientific training and development, support of several databases is undertaken, including one at Yale University, one at the Centre D'Etude du Polymorphisme Humaine in Paris, and one at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The first issue of the periodical publication Research in Progress is published, reporting the research of the 100 Hughes investigators.

William T. Quillen, Esq., a former justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, is elected vice president and general counsel. Lloyd H. Smith, M.D., chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, succeeds Dr. Thorn as chairman of the Institute's Medical Advisory Board.

An Affiliated Investigator Program begins, facilitating appointment of scientists beyond the large laboratory units the Institute has traditionally supported. HHMI can now “support the best scientists where we find them,” according to a public announcement.

HHMI resolves a long-standing disagreement with the Internal Revenue Service. The sale of the Hughes Aircraft Company had established the Institute's net worth, which in turn determines the amount that HHMI must spend each year on research. The terms of the agreement: $35 million direct payment to the federal government; MRO requirements to be met each year (3.5 percent of net worth to be spent on direct research in conjunction with hospitals); $500 million above the MRO requirement to be expended within 10 years, either for medical research or for other appropriate charitable purposes.

In April, Joseph G. Perpich, M.D., J.D., is elected vice president for grants and special programs. In June, Dr. Frederickson resigns as president and Dr. Thorn becomes interim president. In August Dr. Purnell W. Choppin is elected president. Two new trustees are elected: Alexander G. Bearn, M.D., and James D. Wolfensohn.

Purnell W. Choppin, M.D. is elected president.

In October HHMI announces at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that it will begin awarding grants for science education related to biomedical research. Awards under the new philanthropic program are planned in three areas: graduate and undergraduate education, precollege and public science education, and national research resources.

HHMI purchases 22.5 acres in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for a headquarters and conference center. The site is just outside Washington, D.C., not far from NIH. Construction is to begin in 1991.

An architectural and construction team for the headquarters is announced. The architectural team is the Hillier Group of Princeton, New Jersey; the landscape architect, Louise Schiller of Princeton; the builder, George Hyman Construction Co., of Bethesda, Maryland; the owner's representative, P.G. Bell of Houston, Texas; and the project management firm, Linbeck The Builder of Houston.

W. Maxwell Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., provost of Washington University, is elected vice president and chief scientific officer.

Under the new grants program, the first HHMI Predoctoral Fellowships in the Biological Sciences are awarded to 60 outstanding young men and women to study at 21 universities. Sixty (later increased to 80) fellowships will be awarded each year.

Through the Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program, 44 liberal arts and historically black colleges receive $30.4 million in grants to support undergraduate education in biology and related sciences. A major goal is to attract and retain science students, including women and members of minority groups underrepresented in biomedical research.

Under the Research Resources Program, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory receives a $7 million, three-year grant to support its postgraduate training courses in neuroscience and structural biology. A $4 million grant goes to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to support its library and its education and training programs in the biological sciences.

At midyear, HHMI employees number more than 1,600, including 184 independent investigators at 37 U.S. universities, hospitals, and academic medical centers.

HHMI and General Motors Corporation reach a new agreement concerning GM stock acquired as part of the 1985 sale of the aircraft company. Under the agreement, General Motors will purchase by 1995, at a guaranteed price, 90 million of the 99.5 million shares of GM-H stock that the Institute owns.

The Institute awards $61 million to 51 universities for programs to help strengthen undergraduate science education and to increase the number of students who pursue research and teaching careers in biomedical sciences and related disciplines, including chemistry, physics and mathematics.

HHMI begins awarding Research Training Fellowships for Medical Students, with the goal of helping to increase the number of physicians who are significantly involved in research. The first awards go to 47 talented young men and women at 24 medical schools. Annually up to 60 fellowships will provide support for a year of full-time research in any academic or nonprofit research institution in the United States (except NIH).

Investigator Thomas R. Cech, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dr. Cech discovered that RNA can act as an enzyme.

Investigator Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Michigan and colleagues in Toronto identify the gene that is defective in cystic fibrosis.

Recognizing the importance of maintaining safe work places for the Institute's investigators and other employees working in its laboratories, HHMI creates the Office of Laboratory Safety.

The Institute makes the first awards in its program of Postdoctoral Research Fellowships for Physicians. The fellowships are designed to help increase the supply of well-trained physician-scientists by providing support to 75 physicians for three years of full-time basic research training in laboratories chosen by the fellows.

The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) receives a $1 million grant from HHMI. HUGO's purpose is to coordinate the international effort to map and sequence all human genes.

The Institute begins publishing a series of reports on biomedical science for a general audience. The first report, Finding the Critical Shapes, is on structural biology. High school and college biology students are a principal audience.

Irving S. Shapiro, Esq., is elected chairman of the Trustees, succeeding Dr. Thorn.

The neuroscience program is expanded to include cognitive neuroscience, the study of higher mental processes such as memory and learning.

The Institute steps into the international arena with the first round of grant awards to support the research of 14 scientists at seven Canadian institutions and 10 at four Mexican institutions. The new International Research Scholars Program is separate from HHMI's medical research effort, under which scientists become full-time Institute employees. Grants in additional countries are planned for the future.

The cornerstone of the new headquarters is unveiled at a ceremony on November 5 at the construction site in Chevy Chase.

The Institute announces five-year grants to 29 natural history museums, science museums, and children's museums under its Precollege and Public Science Education Program. The grants, ranging from $100,000 to $500,000, enable the museums to extend their exhibits and collections to more primary and secondary students and their teachers and families.

Edwin Krebs, M.D. (left), HHMI senior investigator emeritus at the University of Washington, shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering (in the 1950s) protein phosphorylation, a regulatory mechanism in most living cells.

José E. Trías, Esq., formerly a partner in the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, is elected vice president and general counsel, succeeding Mr. Quillen.

At the close of the fiscal year (August 31), the Institute's investments are valued at $6.57 billion. There are 222 investigators at 54 sites, and the total staff numbers 2,131. Between 1988 and 1992, the Institute has awarded $220 million in science education grants.