Welcome to Penn Medicine’s Endowed Professorship website: a continuously renewed tribute to our faculty, endowed professorship donors, and those memorialized by these Chairs.
By nature, the endowment of a professorship is a very singular expression of philanthropy. They uniquely sustain scholarship and advance medicine over decades — if not centuries — while conferring academia’s highest honor on exceptional members of our faculty. They carry names that endure throughout the history of an institution.
There is a story we share, time and again, of Susan R. Barton. Of how her gift created the John Rhea Barton Professorship of Surgery in honor of her husband. That D. Hayes Agnew, one of the most respected surgeons of his day, was the inaugural chairholder. And — if you’re a student of history as well as art — that Dr. Agnew, John Rhea Barton Professor of Surgery, was immortalized by Thomas Eakins by commission of his students.
An historic and enduring tribute, to be sure. It is also instructive in grasping the remarkable significance of endowed professorships. In one portrait — or photo, or story — there is a noble and very human touchpoint for impact that spans the history of the University of Pennsylvania, the personal histories of donors and their loved ones, and the lifesaving and momentous innovations yet to come.
Friends, family, faculty, members of the Penn Medicine community, I hope you will visit this site again and again. Here, you will sense not only history, but stories of remarkable people: loved ones serving as inspirations for the challenges ahead; lives transformed by leading-edge physicians and teams of their bold colleagues; thousands of people who are safe and healthy today because of re-shaped health policy, emerging cell and gene therapies, or vaccines — including those based on mRNA technology.
Take a moment to consider: In medicine, our charge is to improve and save lives. Learn the accomplishments of our endowed faculty. Grasp the courage of our donors, their families, and their history. Marvel over how all of these stories reach across centuries; histories past, present, and future; and the generations yet to come. Together, we offer a wellspring of hope.
J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
Interim President, University of Pennsylvania
To learn about how you can endow a professorship at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, please email spaeth@upenn.edu.
