|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Dr. Mathilde Krim
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| |
| |
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Mathilde Krim
Dr. Mathilde Krim is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, August 2000
Mathilde Krim, Ph.D.
Founding Chairman and Chairman of the Board
American Foundation for AIDS Research
Soon after the first cases of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were reported in 1981, Mathilde Krim recognized that this new disease raised grave scientific and medical questions and that it might have important socio-political consequences. She dedicated herself to increasing the public’s awareness of AIDS and to a better understanding of its cause, its modes of transmission, and its epidemiologic pattern. Dr. Krim also became personally active in AIDS research through her work with interferons--natural substances now used in the treatment of certain viral and neoplastic diseases.
In April 1983, Dr. Krim founded the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF), the first private organization concerned with fostering and supporting AIDS research. In 1985 AMF merged with a like-minded group based in California to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Today amfAR is the pre-eminent national nonprofit organization dedicated to mobilizing the public’s generosity in support of laboratory and clinical AIDS research, AIDS prevention, and the development of sound AIDS-related public policies. Dr. Krim is amfAR’s Founding Chairman and currently the Chairman of its Board of Directors.
Dr. Krim received her Ph.D. from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1953. From 1953 to 1959, she pursued research in cytogenetics and cancer-causing viruses at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where she was a member of the team that first developed a method for the prenatal determination of sex.
Dr. Krim moved to New York and joined the research staff of Cornell University Medical School following her 1958 marriage to the late Arthur B. Krim--a New York attorney, head of United Artists Motion Picture Company, and founder of Orion Pictures. In 1962 Dr. Krim became a research scientist at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and, from 1981 to 1985, she was the Director of its Interferon Laboratory. She currently holds the academic appointment of Adjunct Professor of Public Health and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Dr. Krim holds 13 doctorates honoris causa and has received numerous other honors and distinctions. In August 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the highest civilian honor in the United States--in recognition of her “extraordinary compassion and commitment.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
Medal History
