Ohio State honors four at autumn commencement - 12/09/05

COLUMBUS – Four individuals will be honored at The Ohio State University's autumn 2005 commencement for their contributions to society and academics, and their dedication to the university. Ceremonies begin at 1 p.m. Sunday (12/11), at St. John Arena.

Deborah A. Ballam, associate provost for Women's Policy Initiatives and director of The Women's Place at Ohio State, will deliver the commencement address.

Honorary doctorates will be presented to Dr. Judah Folkman, a Columbus native and renowned medical researcher; and Jerome Friedman, Nobel laureate and professor of physics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Distinguished Service Awards will be presented posthumously to Michael E. Moritz, a dual graduate of The Ohio State University and the man for whom Ohio State's College of Law was named, who died tragically in 2002; and Lou Ann Moritz Ransom, an active community volunteer and a longtime advocate for the university.

In addition, the Joseph Sullivant Medal, awarded every five years to an outstanding alumni or faculty member, will be presented to L.S. Fan, Distinguished University Professor and the C. John Easton Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Judah Folkman M.D., Doctor of Science
Judah Folkman is Julia Dyckman Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and is currently director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital, Boston.

A native of Columbus, he received his undergraduate degree from Ohio State in 1953 and his medical degree from Harvard University is 1957. From 1960 to 1962, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy at the National Naval Medical College in Bethesda, Maryland, where he and a colleague reported the use of silicone rubber implantable polymers for the sustained release of drugs. These findings led to the development of Norplant—an internationally used contraceptive—and initiated the field of controlled release technology.

Following his residency in the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Folk man joined the Harvard Medical School faculty, becoming professor of surgery in 1967. That same year, he was appointed surgeon-in-chief and chair of the Department of Surgery at Children's Hospital, Boston, a position he held for 14 years before changing his career to full-time research. During this time, he initiated the field of angiogenesis research by studying how malignant tumors develop their blood supply.

In 1971, Folkman published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine advancing the hypothesis that all tumor growth is dependent on angiogenesis—the growth of new blood vessels. During the next decade, he developed a number of laboratory tests that could be used to study tumor angiogenesis. He isolated the first tumor angiogenic proteins in the 1980s, and, in the 1990s, he and his colleagues identified angiostatin and endostatin, both of which are naturally occurring inhibitors of tumor angiogenesis. These discoveries have set the stage for the development of new drugs that may be even more potent inhibitors of tumor angiogenesis. Angiogenesis inhibitors have now received FDA approval in the United States for cancer and for the treatment of macular degeneration and are also approved in 27 other countries.

Folkman is the author of 391 original, peer-reviewed papers and 106 book chapters and monographs. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the recipient of numerous national and international awards.

Jerome I. Friedman, Doctor of Science
Nobel laureate Jerome I. Friedman is Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A native of Chicago, Friedman earned his A.B., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago and began his career in physics at that institution's Enrico Fermi Institute as a research associate in 1956. He then spent three years at Stanford University's High Energy Physics Laboratory before joining the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in 1960, becoming a full professor in 1967. From 1980 to 1983, he served as director of MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science and, from 1983 to 1988, as head of the physics department.

Friedman specializes in experimental particle physics. His research has included studies of particle structure and interactions with high-energy electrons, neutrinos, and hadrons. His experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator proving the existence of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of all matter were recognized by the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded jointly with colleagues Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor, and by the 1989 W.H.K. Panofsky Prize.

He is also the recipient of the Wick Medal of the World Federation of Scientists and the Alumni Medal of the University of Chicago. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Friedman has served on numerous advisory committees for the U.S. Department of Energy and various laboratories, including the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, CERN—the European multinational particle physics laboratory—the Council of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization of Japan, Fermilab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Princeton-Penn Accelerator, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Superconducting Super Collider, and Wilson Laboratory.

He is a past president of the American Physical Society and was chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. He currently serves as vice chair of the board of governors of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Michael E. Moritz, Distinguished Service Award
Michael E. Moritz, a dual graduate of Ohio State and the man for whom Ohio State's College of Law was named, died tragically in 2002. His generosity in making the largest single gift the university has ever received has resulted in unprecedented opportunities for the college and its students.

The Columbus native earned a B.S. in business administration in 1958 and his law degree in 1961, graduating at the top of his class. During his years at the law school, Moritz was supported by a $5,000-a-year Mershon Scholarship, which he was to pay back many times over as he became a successful lawyer.

He began his law career with Dunbar, Kienzle and Murphy and, in 1972, formed his own firm with David McClure, also an Ohio State alumnus. In 1980, the firm – by then a 12-lawyer group – merged with the Cleveland firm of Baker & Hostetler with Moritz as a partner in the Columbus office.

Moritz was a director of Cardinal Health, Pharmacy Systems, and the Pickett Hotel Company. He was a past president of the Capital City Young Republicans Club, trustee of the Kenyon Festival Theatre, and commissioner of the Ohio Elections Commission.

Along with his wife, Lou Ann, Moritz was an active advocate on behalf of the university throughout his life, serving as a director of The Ohio State University Foundation and the campaign committee of the Fisher College of Business, where he established the Moritz Family M.B.A. Scholarship Fund.

His unprecedented gift to the College of Law created a scholarship fund, which offers full tuition and a stipend for 30 Ohio State law students. It also finances leadership awards to three students each year and established four endowed faculty chairs. The gift also established the Gregory H. Williams Dean's Fund for Excellence, named for the college's former dean.

Lou Ann Moritz Ransom, Distinguished Service Award
Lou Ann Moritz Ransom is an active community volunteer and a longtime advocate for The Ohio State University.

After earning her certificate in dental hygiene at Ohio State in 1958, she married Michael E. Moritz, then a student in the College of Law. Their partnership was to last 43 years until Mr. Moritz's untimely death in 2002. In 2001, the couple made an unprecedented gift to the university's College of Law, which has enabled the college to provide student scholarships, make strategic new faculty hires, and support innovative programming. Their generosity was recognized with the naming of the college as the Michael M. Moritz College of Law.

The couple's gifts to their university also include the creation of the Moritz Family M.B.A. Scholarship in the Fisher College of Business and support for the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Department of Athletics, and WOSU stations. In addition, Ransom recently established the Michael Moritz Scholarship for members of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.

Ransom continues to serve Ohio State as a director of The Ohio State University Foundation Board and as a member of the Moritz College of Law's National Council. She retains an ongoing commitment to the college through her involvement with the Moritz Law Scholars. Each year, the Moritz Law Scholarship Committee selects up to 10 members of the incoming class of law students to receive the prestigious Michael E. Moritz Scholarship—the highest honor awarded to a new student. Ransom is instrumental in helping select the Moritz Law Scholars as well as the men and women who serve as their mentors.

The Columbus community also benefits from her support and vision through her service on the boards of the Homeless Families Foundation and the Marburn Academy.