Herbert Boyer And Robert Swanson

Dr. Herbert W. Boyer and Robert A. Swanson (1947 1999) co-founded Genentech in 1976 and launched the biotechnology revolution. It remains one of the leading biotech companies in the world. Boyer was a Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco whose pioneering research in gene-splicing paved the way to a new age of man-made wonders. Swanson was a graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management who became a venture capitalist. After reading about Boyers controversial gene-splicing discovery, Swanson placed a telephone call to Boyers laboratory, and Boyer offered Swanson ten minutes on a Friday afternoon. Bob Swansons ten-minute audience with Herb Boyer lasted several hours, and they fed each others excitement and they left for a local saloon. Many beers later, each had agreed to put up $500 to form a partnership to exploit recombinant DNA technology. Without any initial financial help, Swanson rented a small office in downtown San Francisco, and working closely with Boyer, he developed the business plan for the company he hoped to found. The scientist drafted proposals for the technical end of the operation and the venture capitalist wrote out marketing schemes, and they revised and merged their work as they went along. In April 1976, Boyer and Swanson dissolved their $1,000 partnership and incorporated their enterprise under an abbreviation for genetic engineering technology Genentech. Without any employees of its own, without facilities, without anything but a name and a promising technology, Genentech was born. The company soon became the catalyst of the genetic revolution, a symbol of the awesome commercial potential of biotechnology, and Biotechs first superstar. Herb Boyer went on receive the Albert Lasker Award, the highest honor in American medicine, for his pioneering research in gene-splicing and donated $10 million to the Yale School of Medicine, where he spent three years in post-graduate work. Robert Swanson was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame and died, in 1999, at the age of 52, from brain cancer. Genentech was purchased by the pharmaceutical conglomerate Hoffmann-La Roche in 2009 for nearly $47 billion and employs 11,000 people in the Bay Area. Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson addressed the student delegates at the 1986 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke about their pioneering work and launching the biotechnology revolution. For many years, Herbert Boyer was the Board Chairman of the American Academy of Achievement.