Florida BioHistory

Learn about the scientists behind the discoveries, entrepreneurs,
political leaders, and significant events, people and institutions that are the foundation
of the biotechnology, medical device, pharmaceutical and life science industries
in the state of Florida.

Tell us about Florida's BioHistory. If you are aware of a notable event, person,
organization/company or accomplishment that we should include,
please e-mail: BioHistory@InfoResource.org

1848 -- American Association for the Advancement of Science founded.

American Association for the Advancement of Science founded in 1848 marked the emergence of a national scientific community in the United States, and was the first organization established to promote the development of science and engineering at the national level and to represent the interests of all its disciplines.

Today, the AAAS serves nearly 300 affiliated societies and academies of science and publishes the peer-reviewed general science journal Science. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives that include science policy, international programs, science education, and public understanding of science.

1851 -- The West Florida Seminary (Florida State University) founded.

The West Florida Seminary (Florida State University) was founded in 1851 by the Florida General Assembly and began operation in 1857 in Tallahasse. The University is composed of 17 colleges and institutes and offers more than 300 programs of study, including law and medicine.

In 1993, a university professor and organic chemist, Robert A. Holten, synthesized Taxol - a chemical used in the treatment of lung cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer. Before its exclusive license expired, Florida State received $350 million in royalities for Taxol.

1853 -- The East Florida Seminary (University of Florida) founded.

The University of Florida (UF) traces its roots to 1853 when the state-funded East Florida Seminary took over the Kingsbury Academy in Ocala. The seminary later moved to Gainesville and merged with the Florida Agricultural College, the state's land-grant university.

Today, the University of Florida enrolls more than 46,000 students and is one of the five largest universities in the nation. It is home to 16 colleges and over 150 research centers and institutes. Among these centers are the McKnight Brain Institute; the Health Professions, Nursing, and Pharmacy Building; and the Genetics and Cancer Research Center. The University is ranked as one of the top-five U.S. institutions in the transfer of biotechnology research to the marketplace.

In 1965, Gatorade was invented by researchers at the University of Florida and named after the Florida Gators, the schools football team. Fueled by Gatorade, in 1967 the Gators won their first Orange Bowl.

1859 -- Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species."

In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" in which he postulated his theory of evolution that explained how the diverse of species on Earth evolved from a simple, singled-celled ancestor.

From 1831-1836, Darwin served as a naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle -- a British science expedition around the world. In South America Darwin discovered fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species, and on the Galapagos Islands, located west of Equador, he noticed many variations of plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. Throughout the expedition Darwin studied plants and animals and collected specimens for further study.

Upon his return to London, Darwin conducted thorough research of his notes and specimens, and out of his study grew several related theories: evolution did occur; evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection; and the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called "specialization."

Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism's ability to adapt to its environment. Darwin's theory of evolution remains the foundation of modern biology.

Suggested Reading:

1865 -- Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, presents his laws of heredity.

1873 -- St. Luke's Hospital founded.

St. Luke's Hospital, now part of the Mayo Clinic, was Florida's first private hospital founded by three Jacksonville women in 1873. It began as a two-room cottage with four beds and a budget of less than $1,000. After its second building was burned by an arsonist in 1876, St. Luke's moved in 1878 to Palmetto Street in downtown Jacksonville. It grew quickly and moved to its fourth location, Boulevard and Eighth Street, just north of downtown in 1914. The hospital moved to its current location in the booming Southpoint area in 1984.

1887 -- Marine Hospital Service Hygienic Laboratory (National Institutes of Health) founded.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) traces its roots to 1887, when a one-room laboratory was created within the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), predecessor agency to the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). The MHS was established in 1798 to provide for the medical care of merchant seamen -- charged by Congress with examining passengers on arriving ships for clinical signs of infectious diseases, such as cholera and yellow fever, to prevent epidemics.

During the 1870s and 1880s, scientists in Europe presented compelling evidence that microscopic organisms were the causes of several infectious diseases, and MHS officials closely followed these developments. In 1887, Joseph Kinyoun, a MHS physician trained in the new bacteriological methods, set up a one-room laboratory in the Marine Hospital at Stapleton, Staten Island, New York. Kinyoun called this facility a "laboratory of hygiene" in imitation of German facilities, and within a few months, he identified the cholera bacillus and used his Zeiss microscope to demonstrate it to his colleagues as confirmation of their clinical diagnoses.

The Biologics Control Act enacted in 1902 had major consequences for the Hygienic Laboratory. It charged the laboratory with regulating the production of vaccines and antitoxins, making it a regulatory agency four years before passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. The danger posed by biological products that had emerged from bacteriologic discoveries resulted from their production in animals and their administration by injection. In 1901, thirteen children in St. Louis died after receiving diphtheria antitoxin contaminated with tetanus spores. This tragedy spurred Congress to pass the Biologics Control Act, and between 1903-1907 standards were established and licenses issued to pharmaceutical firms for making smallpox and rabies vaccines, diphtheria and tetanus antitoxins, and various other antibacterial antisera. (In 1972, responsibility for regulation of biologics was transferred to the Food and Drug Administration). (Photo: courtesy of the NIH Almanac)

In 1912 MHS was reorganized, renamed the Public Health Service (PHS) and authorized to conduct research into noncontagious diseases and into the pollution of streams and lakes in the U.S. During World War I, the PHS attended primarily to sanitation of areas around military bases in the U.S., and when the 1918 influenza pandemic struck Washington, physicians from the laboratory were pressed into service treating patients in the District of Columbia because so many local doctors had fallen ill. In 1930, the Ransdell Act changed the name of the Hygienic Laboratory to the National Institute of Health (NIH) and authorized the establishment of fellowships for research into basic biological and medical problems. The roots of this act extended to 1918, when chemists who had worked with the Chemical Warfare Service in World War I sought to establish an institute in the private sector to apply fundamental knowledge in chemistry to problems of medicine. In 1937, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) was created with sponsorship from every Senator in Congress, and was authorized to award grants to nonfederal scientists for research on cancer and to fund fellowships at NCI for young researchers.

During World War II, the NIH focused almost entirely on war-related problems. At the close of the war, PHS leaders guided through Congress the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which defined the shape of medical research in the post-war world. Two provisions were especially important: 1) In 1946 the NCI grants program was expanded to the entire NIH, and the program grew from just over $4 million in 1947, to more than $100 million in 1957, and to $1 billion in 1974. The entire NIH budget expanded from $8 million in 1947 to more than $1 billion in 1966, now fondly remembered as "the golden years" of NIH expansion. Accompanying growth in the grants program was the proliferation of new categorical institutes, and from 1946-1949, voluntary health organizations moved Congress to create institutes for research on mental health, dental diseases, and heart disease. In 1948, language in the National Heart Act made the name of the umbrella organization the National Institutes of Health. 2) The 1944 PHS Act authorized NIH to conduct clinical research, and after the war Congress provided funding to build a research hospital, now called the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The Center which opened in 1953 with 540 beds was designed to bring research laboratories into close proximity with hospital wards in order to promote productive collaboration between laboratory scientists and clinicians. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration photograph, courtesy of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York)

The NIH today, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research and is composed of 27 Institutes and Centers, providing leadership and financial support to researchers in every state and throughout the world.

1918 -- Spanish Influenza Pandemic.

It is estimated that between 25 and 40 million people died from the the influenza outbreak that began in 1918, swept across America in a week and around the world in three months. In all, between 500,000 and 700,000 Americans --civilians and soldiers-- died from the influenza, more than were lost in World War I, II, and the Korean and Viet Nam wars combined.

Latest Findings: In September 2004, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year, $12.5 million grant to five institutions that will collaborate to study genes constructed from 1918 flu-virus particles salvaged from the bodies of World War I soldiers and the exhumed Brevig Mission, Alaska resident. The Institutions include the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C.; Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York; Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the University of Washington. The ultimate goal is to use knowledge gained from the study to develop vaccines, influenza medications and diagnostic tests to prevent a similar influenza outbreak.

Suggested Reading:

1933 -- Thomas Hunt Morgan awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his chromosome theory of heredity.

1947 -- Transistor invented at AT&T's Bell Laboratories.

The transistor, the invention that marked the dawn of the information age, was invented by John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. Bardeen, Shockley and Brattain were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the transistor effect.

Transistors have become an invisible technology that is part of almost every electronic device. Every major information age innovation was made possible by the transistor and its application can be found all around us. (Photos: © The Nobel Foundation)

1952 -- The University of Miami School of Medicine founded.

The University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine was founded in 1952 as Florida's first accredited medical school. Serving more than five million people in South Florida, the school is internationally recognized for research, clinical care, and biomedical innovation.

The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute has been recognized as the number on hospital in the country for opthalmology. Other specialties of the School of Medicine are ear, nose and throat; digestive disorders; neurology and neurosurgery; kidney disease; and urology.

1953 -- Double helix structure of DNA revealed.

The double helix structure of DNA, the hereditary molecule is revealed by two scientists, James D. Watson and Francis Crick. This is one of the key discoveries of the century. Watson and Crick shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with Maurice Wilkins for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nuclear acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.

Rosalind Franklin, whose work contributed to the discovery, died before this date and the rules do not allow a Nobel Prize to be awarded posthumously. (Photos: © The Nobel Foundation)

Suggested Reading:

1955-79 -- Paul Grant Rogers serves in the U.S. Congress.

Paul Grant Rogers was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-fourth Congress by special election to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father, United States Representative Dwight L. Rogers, and reelected to the eleven succeeding Congresses (January 4, 1955-January 3, 1979). Rogers was not a candidate for reelection to the Ninety-sixth Congress in 1978.

Rogers served as chair of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment from 1971 to 1979. Nicknamed "Mr. Health," he was a key representative behind the adoption of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and 1977; the Health Manpower Training Act; the Heart, Blood Vessel, Lung and Blood Act; the Research on Aging Act; the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970; the Medical Device Amendments of 1976; the Emergency Medical Services Act; the Health Maintenance Organization Act; the Clean Air Act; Safe Drinking Water Act; the Radiation Health Safety Act; the Medicare-Medicaid Anti-Fraud and Abuse Amendments of 1977; and the Sea Grant College Act.

He has been Chairman of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation's (unregistered) lobby, Research!America since 1996. The Paul G. Rogers Plaza at the National Institutes of Health was named after him in commemoration of his support. Rogers resides of West Palm Beach, Florida, and is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Hogan & Hartson. Rogers is active in the National Osteoporosis Foundation, Friends of the National Library of Medicine, and the National Leadership Coalition on Health Care.

1958 -- Integrated circuit invented.

1961 -- President John F. Kennedy expands U.S. Space Program

1969 -- Man walks on the moon.

An important benefit of the Apollo Lunar Program and other NASA programs is the ever-growing pipeline of technology that improves human and veterinary healthcare diagnostics and therapeutics.

1969 -- Victor McKusick publishes "Mendelian Inheritance in Man".

Victor McKusick, widely acknowledged as the father of medical genetics, spent his career studying the genetic basis of diseases and disorders with the belief that such an understanding could lead to new methods of diagnosis and treatment. He studied, identified, and mapped genes responsible for inherited conditions such as Marfan syndrome and dwarfism (specifically in Amish communities). In 1969, he proposed the idea of mapping the human genome, over 30 years before the Human Genome Project was established.

McKusick, a graduate of Johns Hopkins (M.D. 1946), spent his entire career there and founded the Division of Medical Genetics in 1957, the first research center and clinic of its kind. In 1969 he published the 1st edition of his book "Mendelian Inheritance of Man", one of the most comprehensive collections of inherited disease genes. In 2002, McKusick received the highest scientific honor in the U.S., the National Medal of Science.

1971 -- NASDAQ Stock Market founded.

Nasdaq, founded February 8, 1971, is now the largest U.S. electronic stock market. With approximately 3,300 companies, it lists more companies and, on average, trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. NASDAQ is home to companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, financial services, transportation, media, biotechnology, medical device, and pharmaceutical.

Suggested Reading:

1971 -- Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution established.

The Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Inc. (HBOI), established in 1971, is one of the world's leading non-profit oceanographic research organizations dedicated to exploring the earth's oceans, estuaries, and coastal regions. HBOI is located on a 600 acre campus near Fort Pierce, Florida and employs 250 scientists, engineers, mariners, and support personnel. The institution is involved in research and education in marine sciences, biological sciences, and marine biomedical sciences.

1972 -- Florida Sea Grant established.

The Florida Sea Grant was established in 1972 as a partnership of academia, government, and industry focused on coastal and marine resources. Funding for the program comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and encourages research into the conservation of marine resources as well as potential biomedical uses. Since its inception, the Florida Sea Grant program has developed and licensed a potent anti-cancer compound and a process to manufacture anti-inflammatory agents from sea corals.

1973 -- Recombinant DNA perfected.

1974 -- Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

John N. Erlenborn, the ranking Republican on the House Committee, was responsible for bringing the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to a floor vote, and is one of the ERISA’s "Founding Fathers." Together with Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY), Senator Pete Williams (D-NJ) and Congressman John Dent (D-PA), Erlenborn crafted provisions and participated in negotiations that were instrumental to the enactment of ERISA which was - and remains - the single most important legislation governing employee benefit plans in the United States providing an important source of financial investment for the stock market. (Photos: Jacob Javits and Pete Williams courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office).

1975 -- Monoclonal antibodies produced.

In 1975, Georges Köhler and César Milstein, showed how monoclonal antibodies can be generated by isolating individual fused myeloma cells.

The 1984 Nobel Laureate in Medicine was awarded jointly to: Niels Jerne, Georges Köhler and César Milstein for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies. (Photos: © The Nobel Foundation)

1976 -- Genentech, founder of the biotechnology industry, established.

In 1976, Genentech was founded by venture capitalist Robert Swanson and biochemist Dr. Herbert Boyer. In the early 1970s, Boyer and geneticist Stanley Cohen at Stanford University pioneered recombinant DNA technology. Excited by the breakthrough, Swanson called Boyer who agreed to give the young entrepreneur 10 minutes of his time. Swanson's enthusiasm for the technology resulted in a three hour meeting and at its conclusion, Genentech was born.

Within a few short years Swanson and Boyer invented a new industry - biotechnology. In 1980, Genentech issued its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and raised $35 million with an offering that jumped from $35 a share to a high of $88 after less than an hour on the market. The event was one of the largest stock run-ups ever, and that event set the stage for future biotechnolgy industry offerings.

Genentech was initially broadly focused in three areas including food processing, industrial chemicals, and human health care. In 1982, Eli Lilly & Co. which had acquired worldwide rights to Genenetch's recombinant human insulin (1978) received FDA approval to market the product -- the first biotechnology therapeutic to reach the marketplace.

Beginning in 1983, Genentech became solely focused on human therapeutics and diagnostics, and in 1985, Genentech received approval from FDA to market its first product, Protropin® (somatrem for injection) growth hormone for children with growth hormone deficiency — the first recombinant pharmaceutical product to be manufactured and marketed by a biotechnology company. In 1990, Genentech and Roche Holding Ltd. of Basel, Switzerland completed a $2.1 billion merger. Today, Genentech is among the world's leading biotech companies with multiple protein-based products on the market for serious or life-threatening medical conditions.

1977 -- First human gene cloned.

Walter Gilbert induced bacteria to synthesize insulin and interferon, and Frederick Sanger published the complete sequence of phage FX174. The 1980 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Frederick Sanger and Walter Gilbert for "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids, and to Paul Berg for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA. (Photos: © The Nobel Foundation)

1980 -- U.S. Supreme Court ruled man-made organism patentable.

1980 -- Bayh-Dole Act provides for university technology transfer.

1990 -- Human Genome Project established.

The U.S. Human Genome Project was established -- a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project, originally planned to last 15 years, was expected to be completed by 2003 due to rapid technological advances.

1993 -- Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) founded.

Biotechnology Industry Organization is the world's largest organization to serve and represent the biotechnology industry. BIO's leadership and service-oriented guidance have helped advance the industry and bring the benefits of biotechnology to people everywhere.

1993 -- Kary B. Mullis awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

2001 -- Human Genome Project draft sequence published.

2004 -- Scripps Florida founded.

Scripps Florida, an expansion of The Scripps Research Institute in California, was founded in 2004 with a one-time $310 million appropriation of federal economic development funds by the Florida State Legislature.

This state-of-the-art biomedical reserach institute, located in Palm Beach County on the campus of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), is comprised of two academic departments - biochemistry and infectology - and the Translational Research Institute (TRI). Research at the institute is focused primarily on basic biomedical science, drug discovery, and the application of the latest research technology to the drug discovery process.

Currently the institute employs 170 researchers and support staff in two temporary facilities. The institute plans to expand into a 350,000 square foot facility in early 2009.

Other Resources

Other State & Province BioHistories

Other Life Science History Resources

Tell us about Florida's BioHistory. If you are aware of a notable event, person,
organization/company or accomplishment that we should include,
please e-mail: BioHistory@InfoResource.org