Why Support Rockefeller

Thank you for visiting our website and for considering The Rockefeller University in your philanthropic planning. Private support helps us provide our scientists with the resources they need to make the kinds of discoveries that advance medicine and health care. We are delighted to have this opportunity to tell you more about how you can contribute to basic research that benefits us all and why a gift to Rockefeller is one of the wisest investments that can be made in the future of medical science.

The Rockefeller University is home to some of the most accomplished scientists in the world.

The current faculty includes:

• Five Nobel laureates
• Three recipients of the National Medal of Science
• Seven recipients of Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards
• Thirty-five members or foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences

The Rockefeller University has an extraordinary record of scientific achievement.

Uniquely among research institutes, Rockefeller has maintained its leadership position in biomedical research for more than a century, thanks to a culture built on unsurpassed excellence, the fostering of transformative basic science, and the application of science to the great medical problems facing humanity. Since its founding in 1901, the University has made essential contributions to biomedicine that have been recognized the world over. These seminal advances include:

• The finding that DNA is the basic material of heredity
• The finding that cancer can be caused by a virus
• The discovery of an obesity gene and the weight-regulating hormone leptin

Over the years, 24 Rockefeller University scientists have received the Nobel Prize.

Scientists at Rockefeller are at the vanguard of scientific discovery.

In the past two decades, as a result of the explosion of new knowledge in biology and the development of powerful new technologies to investigate human disease, science and medicine have fully converged. We have entered a golden age of translational medicine, and the prospects for developing new therapies for poorly treated diseases have never been greater. Scientists at Rockefeller will accelerate this transfer of knowledge from bench to bedside and continue at the forefront of this revolution.

The accelerating progress in the biological sciences means that we can look forward to understanding—with a resolution that was unimaginable just a few decades ago—how the cell works and how the brain works, and how the organism develops, fights infection, regenerates itself, and ages. This knowledge is also fueling a revolution in molecular medicine, opening new therapeutic possibilities for many elusive diseases, including cancer, autoimmune disorders, metabolic conditions, and neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Rockefeller scientists will continue to be at the forefront of discoveries that will revolutionize our understanding of basic biological mechanisms, and they will lead in translating those discoveries into treatments and cures for serious diseases.

We hope you will want to learn more about the giving opportunities at the University, as detailed on this website. Your support can make a difference. We invite you to join us as we work to transform basic scientific discoveries into effective solutions for the great medical problems of our time.