W. Harry Feinstone, ScD '39

An open letter of thanks from Dr. Feinstone to the School   

In 1996, the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health named its Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in honor of W. Harry Feinstone, ScD '39, a retired pharmaceutical researcher and executive from Memphis, Tenn. The renaming was meant as an acknowledgment, as Dean Alfred Sommer said at the time, of his “immense contribution to the public's health through his long career in the pharmaceutical industry and his generous support of the School.”

Dr. Feinstone's multi-million-dollar gifts to the Campaign for Johns Hopkins established at the School an endowment to support the recruitment and early careers of outstanding young scientists within the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

Early Years
W. Harry Feinstone was born in 1913 in Pultusk, Poland. Early in Harry's life, his father, a mechanical engineer, emigrated to Brooklyn, N.Y. The father expected to bring his young family over soon after, but because World War I intervened, seven years passed before Harry and his mother could rejoin Mr. Feinstone.
      After attending high school in New York City, Harry Feinstone studied a year at New York University, worked for two years as a garment-district salesman, and briefly played semiprofessional soccer for a New York team. By 1933, however, he wanted to return to school. Hearing that universities in the southern states were relatively inexpensive, he applied to the University of Arkansas and was accepted. “Arkansas said the semester had started, but if you hurry you can catch up,” says Dr. Feinstone.

Undergraduate School
Thirty-six hours after receiving the acceptance letter, he arrived in Fayetteville, Ark., at 7 a.m., after making connections in St. Louis. He walked to the campus a few blocks away, with $70 in his wallet. “I met a fellow, some man coming my way. He said, 'Hi.' I looked around; that didn't happen in Brooklyn. Somebody else said, 'Good morning,' and pretty soon I got the idea that these people liked me.”
     Harry plowed through the university courses in three years, graduating in 1936 with a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry. He wanted to build a career in the pure sciences; his father, however, wanted him to study medicine and become a physician. Several of his professors at Arkansas sent letters to his father touting a career in science. Harry's zoology professor put it this way:

Harry has too good a mind to waste in medical work. I am aware that medicine could call for mental activity, but it rarely does, and his mind would become dulled with inactivity.

Graduate School at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
So, in 1936 he traveled to the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health to work as a laboratory assistant in the Department of Bacteriology. His diligence soon caught the attention of School of Medicine professor Perrin H. Long, who invited the ardent student to help him with his pioneering research into the treatment of certain types of infectious diseases. “The next three years were like a dream,” Dr. Feinstone recalls.

While I was working in Dr. Long’s lab, I was chosen to get involved in sulfa drug development during the early days of the research. It was such an important time. At that point, sulfa drugs were emerging as the first chemical substance that had any real effect on infectious diseases. It was a great improvement over arsenic, mercury, and silver compounds, which were ineffective in trials and proved to be tissue-destroying nostrums.

A Career in Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Feinstone graduated from the School of Public Health in 1939 with a ScD in medical sciences, and within weeks was hired by American Cyanamid to direct its division of biological chemotherapy. He was to set up a new research program to continue the work he had begun at Hopkins. Over the next five years, he developed many sulfa drugs—hailed as the first “miracle drugs” of the twentieth century—that are still in use today.
     From 1947 to 1958, he was a consultant in product and drug development for several companies. Warner-Lambert, for instance, marketed one of his products, an antihistamine called Anahist, which turned out to be the first cold remedy to be sold over the counter. In all, Dr. Feinstone worked for about 30 companies, receiving royalties whenever his products were made and sold.
     “They would start selling, and a month or two later I would get a check for $24.73, and the next month for $85, and the next month for $300,” he recalls.
     His clients included Schering-Plough, where Dr. Feinstone remained until 1976, when he retired as vice president for research and development. He had helped make the company one of the world's largest manufacturers of cosmetics and over-the-counter drugs.

Academia
Soon after his retirement from Plough, the University of Memphis invited Dr. Feinstone to start a second career as that university’s first Distinguished Research Professor. He worked at the university until 1993. Interacting with graduate students at Memphis made him aware, he now says, “of the importance of attracting younger, eager faculty by providing support for their research”—an impression that ever since has driven many of his philanthropic efforts.

Retirement
Dr. Feinstone still lives in Memphis today, and  spends his time tending to family (he has six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren) and personal business, reading, and keeping up with developments at the University of Memphis.

Philanthropic Ventures
He continues to support the University of Memphis both with his time and monetary gifts. Other universities and educational institutions have also benefitted from Dr. Feinstone’s generosity, including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which in 1996 established the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. He has established endowments at this School to support the recruitment and early careers of outstanding young scientists and to establish the Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.