Origins: 1905-1953
Howard Hughes, the brash and brilliant scion of a Texas entrepreneur, parlayed a relatively modest inheritance into a fortune. A man of restless intellect, great energy, and diverse talents, he dabbled in movies; designed, built and raced airplanes; made TWA a premier international airline; and nurtured the Hughes Aircraft Company into one of the country's largest and most important defense contractors. Although in his later years Mr. Hughes retreated into a reclusive existence dominated by illness, his life was nonetheless one of remarkable achievement.
It is likely that the creation in 1953 of the medical institute that bears his name will be Mr. Hughes' most enduring accomplishment. His vision for his scientific philanthropy was neither modest nor ordinary: He wanted his medical institute to be committed to basic research, to probe "the genesis of life itself."
 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
| 1905 |
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr., is born in Houston, Texas. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1924 |
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1925 |
Mr. Hughes' will, written just before his first marriage, provides for the creation of an institution to support medical research. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1926 |
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1932 |
In a rented corner of a Lockheed Aircraft Corporation hangar in Burbank, Mr. Hughes starts the Hughes Aircraft Company as a division of the Hughes Tool Company and begins research on military aircraft. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1946 |
Dr. Mason oversees Mr. Hughes's long and difficult convalescence following the crash of his XF-11 experimental photoreconnaissance plane in Beverly Hills on July 7. Their conversations turn again to medical research. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1947 |
Mr. Hughes begins to seek advice on how best to support medical science. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1951 |
Six physician-scientists are appointed as Howard Hughes Medical Research Fellows. |
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| 1953 |
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Hughes Aircraft Company are chartered in Delaware on December 17. |
||||||||||||||
