30 years after first entering the Wilmer Eye Institute at Hopkins Hospital to seek treatment for his father’s macular degeneration, Chairman of BP Capital Management and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens returned last week to announce a $20 million donation to the hospital’s Ophthalmology Department.
According to Dr. Peter McDonnell, the Institute’s director, the gift will allow the hospital to recruit young scientists who test ideas and do research in areas where there were previously no funds.
Pickens’s gift is only his most recent contribution to Hopkins. In 2005, he set up a $2 million professorship in his name and later pledged $6 million in 2009 to construct the Smith Building on the East Baltimore Campus. However, his latest contribution stands apart because the funds will go towards interdisciplinary research.
“His gift is specifically for Wilmer, but we have people from other departments, people with joint appointments in Public Health, BioMedical Engineering, Oncology, Anesthesiology already working in our building,” McDonnell said, “and all of them are working on something with an applicability to the eye.”
Because of their interdepartmental work, those researcher’s projects will also be supported by the gift.
Pickens’s gift is unique amongst those the hospital normally receives. Upon announcing the donation, he said that, while the thought of giving money for a building bearing his own name was appealing, investing in young scientists delivers a better return in terms of an impact on society.
People are usually very specific about what they want donated funds to be used for, McDonnell said.
“You’ll usually hear ‘I want you to study macular degeneration. period.’ or ‘I am very grateful for some doctor who saved my life, so I want to establish a chair in his name.’ As a patient, you don’t know these young people,” he said, “and it is rare to find someone who will say ‘I don’t have anything particular in mind, but I want you to be able to recruit stellar young people and let them try out their ideas.”
In regards to implementation, the department plans to designate a group of faculty who will invite applicants from around the world to join the hospital as Boone Pickens Scholars and fund their research ideas. Although certainly not every idea will pan out, McDonnell said that he expects upwards of half of the projects will produce positive results.
“If I had all of the brilliant ideas myself, I would just go out and do them! I don’t have that power, but fortunately, we now have the ability to find and fund the brilliant young people who do,” he said.
Although his father’s vision could not have been saved by the technology that existed at the time, Pickens was impressed by the care his father received at Hopkins.
Much of Pickens’s relationship with the hospital grew from his friendship with Dr. Walter Stark, an ophthalmologist and cornea specialist at Wilmer and a fellow Oklahoma native. When he returned to Baltimore a decade later after he too was diagnosed with macular degeneration, Stark was the doctor who successfully treated his eyes and saved his vision. What followed would evolve into a 30-year relationship between Pickens and Hopkins.
“Oklahoma born and grown people are kind of a different breed,” Stark said in a video released by the Institute. “So when Boone and I met, being from Oklahoma, that was a common bond that made us friends about 30 years ago.”
The relationship has been mutually beneficially.
“When I have a problem, and I do have an eye problem and all, I find the best, and that was Wilmer,” Pickens said. “It’s the best in opthalmology, the best school, the best hospital, the best doctors of any opthalmology group anywhere in the world.”
The feelings run both ways.
“Mr. Pickens is a generous man who’s gift will allow young doctors to reach their full potential,” McDonnell said. “They will get a jumpstart in the field because these funds will allow them to research and test ideas five to 10 years sooner than we could have imagined. I definitely believe that this will make a lot of things possible, creating connections between departments like never before.”
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