Annual report : 2005 / Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

  • Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Date:
2005
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Annual report : 2005 / Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HISTORY OF THE BURROUGHS WELLCOME FUND The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities. Within this broad mission, we seek to accomplish two primary goals—to help scientists early in their careers develop as independent investigators, and to advance fields in the basic biomedical sciences that are undervalued or in need of particular encouragement. BWF has an endowment of $700 million and awards approximately $30 million in grants annually in the United States and Canada. We channel our financial support primarily through competitive peer-reviewed award programs, which encompass five major categories—basic biomedical sciences, infectious diseases, interfaces in science, translational research, and science education. BWF makes grants primarily to degree-granting institutions on behalf of individual researchers, who must be nominated by their institutions. To complement these competitive award programs, we also make grants to nonprofit organizations conducting activities intended to improve the general environment for science. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund was founded in 1955 as the corporate foundation of Burroughs Wellcome Co., the U.S. branch of the Wellcome pharmaceutical enterprise, based in the United Kingdom. The Wellcome enterprise was started in 1880 by two young American pharmacists, Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs, who had moved to London to manufacture and sell “compressed medicines”—that is, pills—which the pair believed could replace the potions and powders of the day. Their firm prospered. After Silas Burroughs died in 1895, Henry Wellcome directed the growth of the company into an international network with subsidiaries in numerous countries on several continents. As the business grew, Henry Wellcome held firm to his strong belief that research was fundamental to the development of excellent pharmaceutical products—a belief he put into practice by establishing the industry’s first research laboratories. When Henry Wellcome died in 1936, his will vested all of the corporate shares in a new organization—the Wellcome Trust—devoted to supporting research in medicine and allied sciences and to maintaining museums and libraries dedicated to these fields. Over the decades, the Trust grew to become the world’s largest charitable foundation devoted exclusively to the biomedical sciences. In 1955, leaders at the Wellcome Trust and Burroughs Wellcome Co.-USA envisioned an extension of this effort in the United States—and so was born the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. In 1993, after nearly four decades as a corporate foundation, BWF recieved a $400 million grant from the Wellcome Trust to become a foundation fully independent of the Trust and the Burroughs Wellcome Co. Though we are today an independent philanthropy, our history and joint program activities allow us to maintain productive ties with the Wellcome Trust. BWF has an endowment of $700 million and awards $30 million in grants annually in the United States and Canada. We channel our financial support through five competitive peer-reviewed award programs.