The Cartwright lectureship was established in the late 1870s through a bequest from Benjamin A. Cartwright of Newark, NJ to the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S). In his will, Mr. Cartwright stated that he wished to institute a course of lectures "modeled after the Lettsonian or Croonian Lectures of England"—formal occasions that featured important summaries of existing medical knowledge or, in some cases, reports of cutting-edge investigations in medicine or surgery. The lectures were given regularly from 1881 until World War I, at which time they were discontinued indefinitely.

In 1928, the P&S Alumni Association transferred the Cartwright fund directly to the College, with the recommendation that the bequest remain untouched until the fund could accrue enough to support a lecture series of the highest quality and distinction, in keeping with what Mr. Cartwright had originally indicated and envisioned. Five decades later—and nearly a century after Mr. Cartwright's passing—this long-time goal was finally realized with the reinstatement of a new and improved lecture series in 1974.

The Cartwright lecture series has since become a major forum for the exchange of scientific knowledge, attracting scholars, researchers, and clinicians from the world's premier medical, scientific, educational, and policymaking institutions to speak and participate (among them: top officials from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health, one United States Senator, and nine Nobel Laureates).

2011-2012 EVENTS

"Passive Immunization Approach to HIV Prevention" David Ho, MD Scientific Director and CEO, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center Ralph D. Feigin Professor Irene Diamond Professor, The Rockefeller University Thursday, June 28 4:30 p.m. P&S Alumni Auditorium 650 West 168th Street, First Floor

David D. Ho, M.D., is the founding Scientific Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, a world-renowned biomedical research institute. He is also the Irene Diamond Professor at The Rockefeller University.

Dr. Ho received his degrees from California Institute of Technology (1974) and Harvard Medical School (1978). Subsequently, he did his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center/UCLA School of Medicine (1978-1982) and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (1982-1985), respectively.

Dr. David Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for 30 years, publishing over 350 papers. His elegant studies, beginning in 1994, unveiled the dynamic nature of HIV replication in vivo and revolutionized our basic understanding of this horrific disease (Nature 1995; Science 1996). This knowledge led Dr. Ho to champion combination antiretroviral therapy (N. Engl. J. Med. 1995; Science 1996) that resulted in unprecedented control of HIV in patients (Nature 1997). AIDS mortality in richer nations has declined seven-fold since 1996, and a massive international effort is now under way to bring such life-saving treatment to millions in the developing world. Dr. Ho has been the major driving force behind this major medical breakthrough in what is arguably the worst plague in human history.

Dr. Ho's research team is now devoting considerable efforts to develop vaccines and antibody-based strategies to halt the spread of the AIDS epidemic. Furthermore, he is now heading up a consortium of Chinese and American organizations to help address the crisis of HIV/AIDS in China.

Dr. Ho has received numerous honors and awards for his scientific accomplishments. He is the recipient of twelve honorary doctorates (including from Swarthmore, Tufts, Columbia, Tulane, University of Natal, and Tsinghua University). He has been chosen as the commencement speaker at Caltech, MIT, and Harvard School of Public Health. Additional accolades include the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine, Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science & Technology, the Squibb Award, and the Hoechst Marion Roussel Award. Dr. Ho has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica (Republic of China), Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. He was also inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

Dr. Ho was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology. He is currently a board member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation.

Dr. Ho was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1996 and received a Presidential Medal in 2001.

1881 Prof. Robert Bartholow, Jefferson Medical College
1882 Prof. John C. Dalton, College of Physicians and Surgeons
1883 Prof. W.T. Belfield, Rush Medical College, Chicago
1884 Prof. Burt G. Wilder, Cornell University
1886 Prof. William Osler, University of Pennsylvania
1888 Prof. William H. Welch, Johns Hopkins University
1890 Dr. John S. Billings, United States Army
1892 Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborne, Columbia University
1894 Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, Yale University
1896 Prof. George H. Huntington, Columbia University
1898 Prof. William W. Keen, Jefferson Medical College
1900 Prof. John G. Curtis, Columbia University
1902 Dr. Richard Cabot, Boston
1904 Baron Kanehiro Takaki, Surgeon General, Japanese Navy
1906 Baron Kanehiro Takaki, Surgeon General, Japanese Navy
1908 James Ewing, Cornell University
1910 Dr. Adolf Magnus Levy, University of Berlin
1912 Dr. Ludwig Aschoff, Freiburg, Germany
1916 Prof. Richard Mills Pearce, Philadelphia
1974 Dr. Paul B. Beeson, Oxford University
1975 Dr. Charles B. Huggins, University of Chicago
1976 Sir George White Pickering, Oxford University
1977 Dr. George L. Engel, University of Rochester
1978 Dr. John R. Hogness, University of Washington
1979 Dr. DeWitt Stetten, Jr., National Institutes of Health
1980 Sir Peter Medawar, Clinical Research Center, Harrow
1981 Dr. Joshua Lederberg, Rockefeller University
1982 Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, National Institutes of Health
1983 Dr. Arnold Relman, New England Journal of Medicine
1984 Dr. Matthew Stanley Meselson, Harvard University
1985 Dr. George Palade, Yale University
1986 Sir Bernard Katz, University College, London
1987 Dr. Michael J. Bishop, Univ. of California, San Francisco
1988 Dr. Luc Montagnier, Pasteur Institute
1989 Dr. David Baltimore, The Whitehead Institute
1990 Dr. Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., University of California, Berkeley
1991 Dr. W. French Anderson, National Institutes of Health
1992 Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, University of Texas, Dallas
1993 Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, National Institutes of Health
1995 Dr. Bruce M. Alberts, National Academy of Sciences
1996 Dr. Norman E. Shumway, Stanford University
1997 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, State of New York
2000 Dr. Judah Folkman, Harvard Medical School
2001 Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, University of California at San Francisco
2002 Dr. Elaine Fuchs, University of Chicago
2003 Dr. Susumu Tonegawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2004 Sir Paul Nurse, Rockefeller University
2008 Bert Sakmann, M.D., Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research
2010 David M. Oshinsky, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
2011 Huda Zoghbi, M.D., Baylor College of Medicine