Nearly 90 years after being built, Building B of the Harvard Medical School Quadrangle has a new name: The Isabelle and Leonard Goldenson Biomedical Research Building. Last spring, the Goldensons established a series of planned gifts totaling $60 million to the medical school, the largest gift in the school's history.
The Goldensons "have resolved to devote the bulk of their fortune for research on the brain," said Dean Daniel C. Tosteson at the dedication ceremony. "We celebrate their choice. The brain contains the deepest mysteries of human existence."
More than 100 friends and Goldenson family members gathered for the dedication, which was held Oct. 3 in a tent erected next to Building B. The Goldensons were hailed by Dean Tosteson, Harvard University President Neil Rudenstine, and William Berenberg, HMS professor of pediatrics, emeritus, for their more than 40 years of work on behalf of the handicapped and for their belief that scientific research is key for fighting neurological disorders.
"One of [the gift's] most important features is that it is committed to research," Rudenstine said. "Research in a critical field of medical science that will continue far into the future and is based on the unabashed belief that exploration and discovery of the highest quality can and will lead us to the cure of crippling and destructive diseases."
Leonard Goldenson, who graduated from Harvard College in 1927 and from Harvard Law School in 1930, founded the American Broadcasting Companies. The Goldensons' work on behalf of the handicapped began after their first daughter, Genise, who was born in 1943, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. They founded the United Cerebral Palsy Association in 1950 to raise money for research and education about this little understood disability.
The building named in their honor opened in 1906, and has 30 laboratories being renovated to provide state-of-the- art facilities for the neurosciences. "We are here today to dedicate a facility that embodies and empowers hope and commitment," said Leonard Goldenson. "It will be a place to practice science that was unimaginable when Isabelle and I set out to understand the truth of our daughter's inability to walk or talk."
At the ceremony, Dean Tosteson awarded the Goldensons a "Dean's Medal," and announced that Leonard Goldenson would serve as honorary chairman for the medical school's fund- raising campaign.
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