Tag Archives: University of Pennsylvania

Jew of the Week: Baruch Blumberg

Hepatitis B and The First Cancer Vaccine

Baruch Samuel “Barry” Blumberg

Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1925-2011) was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn. He studied at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, and then at Far Rockaway High School in Queens (which was also attended by fellow prominent scientist and former Jew of the Week Richard Feynman). After serving in the US Navy during World War II (attaining the rank of commanding officer), Blumberg studied math and medicine at Columbia University. He earned his MD in 1951, worked as a doctor for several years, then enrolled at Oxford University to do a PhD in biochemistry. Decades later, he would be elected Master of Oxford’s prestigious Balliol College (founded all the way back in 1263), making him the first American and the first scientist to hold the title. In the 1960s, Blumberg discovered the hepatitis B antigen, and soon showed how the virus could cause liver cancer. His team began working on a diagnostic test and a vaccine, and successfully produced both. Although Blumberg had a patent on the vaccine, he gave it away freely to save as many lives as possible. (One thirty-year follow up study showed that the vaccine reduced infection from 20% to 2% of the population, and liver cancer deaths by as much as 90%. Some have therefore called it the first cancer vaccine.) Blumberg was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with hepatitis B, and his “discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases.” In 1992, he co-founded the Hepatitis B Foundation, dedicated to helping people living with the disease, and funding research for a cure. Meanwhile, Blumberg taught medicine and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Incredibly, he also directed NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, was president of the American Philosophical Society, and a distinguished scholar advising the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, as well as the Library of Congress. He had worked for the National Institutes of Health, and The Institute for Cancer Research. Blumberg remained Torah-observant throughout his life, and rarely missed his weekly Talmud class. He credited his Jewish studies as a youth for sharpening his mind and allowing him to excel in academia, and once said that he was drawn to medicine because of the ancient Talmudic statement that “if you save a single life, you save the whole world.” Fittingly, it has been said that Blumberg “prevented more cancer deaths than any person who’s ever lived.”

Words of the Week

Science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how we go to heaven.
– Renowned evolutionary bologist Stephen J. Gould

Jews of the Week: Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin

Levin and Feinberg

Mike Feinberg (b. 1969) graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, while Dave Levin (b. 1970) graduated from Yale the following year. The two met in a Houston school where they were both teachers. Despite each having just two years of teaching experience, they started a new education program called KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) in 1994. The program was geared towards children living in poverty, and aimed to increase the number of such students that graduate and go on to college. Students would go to school six days a week, with longer days and shorter summer breaks. There was a lot of homework, but also a lot of teamwork; strict discipline, combined with music and travel. The result was spectacular. Impoverished students were succeeding at unprecedented levels, and enjoying it, too. Feinberg and Levin won ‘Teacher of the Year’ awards, then opened two official KIPP schools, one in Houston, and one in the Bronx. By 1999, these were among the best schools in their regions. In 2000, KIPP got a $15 million donation from Don and Doris Fisher (the founders of GAP, and former Jews of the Week), to expand KIPP into a national network. Today, KIPP has 200 schools across America with over 80,000 students. It is the largest and most successful charter school system in the US. About 96% of students are either black or Hispanic, and 87% from struggling households. 90% go on to graduate high school (compared to the national average of 80%, and 69% for black students), and 45% get college degrees (compared to the 9% national average for impoverished students). So many people want to get into KIPP schools that students are selected through a lottery. Feinberg and Levin have won multiple awards and honourary degrees for their work, including the prestigious Charles Bronfman Prize, for “Paradigm-Shifting Vision in Education”, and the National Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen. Their story is told in the bestselling book Work Hard, Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created America’s Most Promising Schools.

Words of the Week

The Torah commands: “Six days shall you labor, and do all your work.” But is it possible for a person to do “all their work” in six days? Rather, [it means to say] rest on Shabbat as if all your work is done.
– Mekhilta

Jew of the Week: Jack Goldman

Jacob Goldman (Photo Credit: Joyce Dopkeen, The New York Times)

Jacob Goldman (Photo Credit: Joyce Dopkeen, The New York Times)

Jacob E. Goldman (1921-2011) was born in Brooklyn to Jewish-Russian immigrants. He studied at both Yeshiva University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he got his Ph.D in physics. After brief stints working for Westinghouse and as a teacher for Carnegie Tech, he joined the Ford Motor Company’s Scientific Research Laboratory, where he helped to develop the sodium-sulfur battery for electric cars and large-scale energy storage, among many other things. Rising through the ranks, he soon became head of the department, and the first Jew to be an executive at the formerly anti-Semitic Ford Company. In the 1960s, Goldman was brought to Xerox to head its new computing division, and serve as chief scientist and technical officer. At the time, the computer industry was just getting underway, and Goldman convinced the authorities at Xerox to start a new research facility on the West Coast, near Stanford University, where they would be able to recruit young talent. For a while, the New-York based Xerox was reluctant to open up a new lab so far away, but eventually gave Goldman a chance. Teaming up with fellow physicist George Pake, the two opened up the Palo Alto Research Center, better known as PARC, in 1970. This lab would go on to completely revolutionize the digital world and the computer industry. PARC scientists, under the visionary leadership of Goldman and Pake, developed the laser printer, Ethernet, and most importantly, the first personal computer, as well as the first computer to have a graphical user interface (GUI) with an easy to use “desktop”. The concept of windows, folders, and icons that are operated by a computer mouse was also developed at PARC, as were the basics for LCD screens and optical discs. Interestingly, one of the few people who got a tour of PARC was a young Steve Jobs, who was so inspired by what he so that he went on to found Apple, drawing on most of PARC’s technologies for his own designs. Ultimately, it was Apple and Microsoft that took advantage of PARC’s advancements, as Xerox failed to support Goldman in commercializing those technologies. Nonetheless, Goldman is considered a key figure in transforming computers from massive industrial calculators to personal interactive tools used by the public.

Words of the Week

Jews have tended to prefer the power of ideas to the idea of power.
– Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks