Fortunately, the general thought to add a few laboratories and research rooms to the museum on the first floor, which displayed such items as a great whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling.
But though it was the general who founded the institute, it was Hilary Koprowski who put it on the map--or, some would say, the globe.
In 1957, when Koprowski arrived, the place "was a dilapidated, archaic, musty, dusty institute of biology and medicine where no major research was being done. It was Hilary who built it up," says Michael Katz, a colleague of Koprowski's and chairman of pediatrics at Columbia University Medical School in New York.
Under Koprowski's leadership, the institute grew dramatically: from about six laboratories and five senior scientists in 1957 to about 50 laboratories and 70 senior scientists today. Its operating budget also skyrocketed, to about $30 million annually, with about 75 percent of its ...
