Word: steenbock
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Wisconsin's big money-maker is a skinny, self-effacing biochemist named Harry Steenbock. Some 18 years ago he discovered that food could be enriched with vitamin D (especially useful in preventing rickets in children) by being treated with ultraviolet rays...
Well aware that his discovery spelled money, Steenbock pondered what to do with it. Tradition gave him three choices: he could 1) keep his university job and develop his invention on the side, as most professor-inventors do; 2) quit the university and go into business to exploit his patents; or 3) make a free gift of his patent to food manufacturers...
...Steenbock chose none of these. He decided, instead, to give his patents to Wisconsin to finance scientific research. Up shot was the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Administered by alumni leaders, the foundation is a holding company for patents obtained by Wisconsin research, each year turns its proceeds over to the University for further specified projects...
Professor or Percentage. Content with his $7,000 salary, Steenbock at first refused to accept royalties on his patents, but the University made him take 15%. Eventually, to the dismay of plain-living Harry Steenbock, this amounted to $50,000-$75,000 a year. The Research Foundation, meanwhile, grew rich beyond its dreams. Wisconsin professors began to produce a bonanza of new inventions; today the Research Foundation owns some 30 patents, including one for the synthetic production of hormones...