Out & About
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The American Museum of Natural History held a dinner last night to celebrate the naming of the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing.
The wing assembles the largest collection of real dinosaur fossils in the world — and that doesn’t include Mr. Koch. “Yeah, dinosaurs. Some people say I am one,” he said, laughing. “I do feel like one on occasion.”
But with a two-and-a-half-month-old son, John Mark, in the house, and a ranking of 33 on this year’s Forbes list of the world’s richest people, Mr. Koch seems far from fossilization.
Just the other night, he had a major role in another science event. He and several others — Mortimer Zuckerman, Jack Rudin, Fayez Sarofim, and Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn — underwrote a symposium and dinner in honor of Dr. Paul Marks.
Dr. Marks spent 30 years at Columbia University researching, teaching, and administrating, before leaving in 1980 to become president and chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which he transformed into one of the world’s top destinations for research and treatment. He stepped down in 1999.
Organized by the university and the cancer center, the event gathered 23 scientists, eight Nobel Laureates among them (including Drs. Richard Axel, Joseph Goldstein, Eric Kandel, and Bengt Samuelsson), to discuss “Frontiers of Biomedical Research in the 21st Century.”
The event also served to publicly launch the Paul Marks Scholars Fund, the first fund at the university designated to recruit and retain stellar physician-scientists, and designed to help keep the university on the frontier of biomedical research. The former chief executive of Merck, Ray Vagelos, is leading the campaign, which has already collected $2 million. The goal is to spend interest on an endowment of $5 million.
The occasion for all of this was Dr. Marks’s 80th birthday, which he marked on the actual day, August 16, at his friend Henry Kissinger’s country club. The birthday may put him closer to the dinosaurs than Mr. Koch (who is in his mid-60s), but Mr. Marks will have none of that.
“I’m feeling like I’m 40 and I don’t have any reason to stop,” he said. “My life is a constant love affair with the whole potential of exploring the unknown.”
What are some of the Dr. Marks’s secrets? “He doesn’t just talk about science. He talks about tennis and food and world politics,” a neighbor, Eugene Kohn, said.
He has also helped many friends and friends of friends secure the best treatment for cancer, a habit that has earned him loyal and loving company. And then there is his accomplished family: His wife, Joan, had the program in human genetics she founded at Sarah Lawrence College named after her; son Matthew runs an art gallery with sister Elizabeth, and son Andrew is a science star in his own right at Columbia, the director of the center for molecular cardiology and a department chairman.
The younger Dr. Marks recalled the moment he knew he wanted to be like Dad. “I was a little boy, walking out of the apartment with my father. The doorman said, ‘Hi Doc,’ in this respectful way. That made me feel very proud.”
Perhaps little John Mark Koch will feel the same way when he walks into the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing.
