| Notes |
“The modern story of Hopkins is inextricably linked to him,” said Ronald J. Daniels, the university’s president, as he walked around the campus recently. “When you look at these great investments that have transformed American higher education, it’s Rockefeller, it’s Carnegie, it’s Mellon, it’s Stanford — and it’s Bloomberg.”
Hopkins, in return, has become something of a brain trust for Mr. Bloomberg, shaping his approach to issues like cigarette smoking, gun violence and obesity.
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It was faculty members at Hopkins who introduced Mr. Bloomberg, as a donor and as a trustee, to a growing body of science linking behavior and disease.
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Mr. Bloomberg, who was the senior class president, in the 1964 Johns Hopkins yearbook. The caption under the photo read, “Bloomberg controls balloting with customary aplomb.”
Mr. Bloomberg, who was the senior class president, in the 1964 Johns Hopkins yearbook. The caption under the photo read, “Bloomberg controls balloting with customary aplomb.”Credit...Johns Hopkins University
“That is when he discovered public health,” said Alfred Sommer, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 1990 until 2005.
At times, Mr. Bloomberg, then a high-flying entrepreneur, was resistant to paying for such research, arguing that some of the most intractable health problems were best left to government. “That’s policy; that’s politics,” Mr. Sommer recalled him saying.
But the underlying ideas stuck, and, as mayor, Mr. Bloomberg pressed the City Council to ban smoking in city parks, and the Board of Health to require fast-food chains to post calorie counts and restaurants to stop selling oversize sodas.
“He was in a position to act on things he had once told us we really shouldn’t be bothered with,” Mr. Sommer said. “He has been the public health mayor ever since.” |