Alfred E. Mann

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Alfred E. Mann (born 1925, Portland, OR), who is also known as Al Mann, is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is a billionaire.

Born and raised in Portland, his father was English and mother Polish. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1946 and has remained there ever since. He received his B.S. and M.S. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, doing graduate work in nuclear and mathematical physics. Mann holds honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California, The Johns Hopkins University, Western University, and the Technion Institute (Israel).

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[edit] Business

In 1956, Mann founded Spectrolab, the first of his aerospace companies. While at Spectrolab, an electrooptical systems company, he also founded Heliotek, a semiconductor company, that became a major supplier of solar cells for spacecraft. Among other accomplishments during his tenure, Mann's companies provided the electric power for over 100 spacecraft and constructed one of the lunar experiments. Although he sold both companies to Textron in 1960 (merged into one, Spectrolab is now a subsidiary of Boeing Satellite Systems) he continued to manage them until 1972. After he left those companies to found Pacesetter Systems, which focused on cardiac pacemakers, he sold that company in 1985 and managed it until 1992. It is now a part of St. Jude Medical. Mann then went on to establish MiniMed (insulin pumps and continuous glucose devices, now owned by Medtronic) and Advanced Bionics (neuroprosthetics), which was owned by Boston Scientific from 2004-2008. Boston Scientific and the Advanced Bionics management had agreed to split the company. Under this split, Boston Scientific would own the pain management and other neural stimulation portions and Advanced Bionics would focus on developing, manufacturing and distributing cochlear implants for the restoration of hearing to the deaf.

He is currently involved in several companies, including:

  • Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of MannKind Corporation, a biomedical company working on a unique inhalable insulin for the treatment of diabetes and therapeutic vaccines for cancer;
  • founder and Chairman of Second Sight, a biomed company working on a retinal prosthesis;
  • founder and Chairman of Bioness, a company devoted to applying electrostimulation for functional neural defects such as paralysis;
  • founder and Chairman of the Board of Quallion, LLC, a company producing high reliability batteries for medical products and for the military and aerospace industries;
  • Chairman of Stellar Microelectronics, an electronic circuit manufacturer for the medical, military and aerospace industries;
  • Mann also chairs the Southern California Biomedical Council (SCBC or SoCalBio), a trade association that represents and promotes the growth of the life-science community in the Greater Los Angeles region (see: http://www.socalbio.org).'
  • Serves on the Board of Directors and is the largest investor in Eclipse Aviation

[edit] Philanthropy

Alfred Mann has made major philanthropic contributions. His two most notable are below.

[edit] Alfred Mann Institutes

Mr. Mann has so far established Alfred E. Mann Institutes for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), known as AMI/USC ($162 million); at Purdue known as AMI/Purdue ($100 million); and at the Technion known as AMIT ($104 million) are business incubators for medical device development in preparation for commercialization. The Institutes are essentially fully funded. Three other universities are in late stage discussions and one is likely to be announced during 2007. AMI was founded in 1998 when Alfred Mann made his first $100 million gift to USC, a major private research university in Los Angeles. The total gifted endowment for AMI/USC is $162 million since then.

The Alfred Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering is charged with selecting, establishing and overseeing the institutes, similar to AMI at USC and at other research universities.

Mann is a Life Trustee of the University of Southern California.[1]

[edit] Alfred Mann Foundation

Founded in 1985, the Alfred Mann Foundation has several core aims. It aims to work with scientists and research organizations to find bionic solutions for people suffering from debilitating medical impairments

[edit] Trivia

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  • Mann still works 80-hours a week on his start-up companies.
  • Mann is a member of the National Academies for Engineering (NAE)
  • According to Forbes magazine, his estimated net worth exceeds $2.2 billion, ranking him the 204th richest man in America[2] and the 390th richest man in the world. [3]
  • He is married to Claude Mann, a successful businesswoman and humanitarian. They met in 1977.
  • He has seven children.
  • As a proud alumnus of UCLA, he tried to make a substantial monetary gift to his alma mater; however, he became frustrated over the bureaucratic delays involved in donating to the noted public university and ended up, after lobbying by USC President Steven B. Sample, making a $162 million gift to the arch-rival private university. At the time of the USC gift in 1998, Mr. Mann announced plans to give a similar amount of money to UCLA, but the parties could never come to terms.
  • Mann has received numerous accolades; he has been honored many dozens of times by various organizations.
  • Mann has received four honorary doctorate degrees.
  • In 2004 he won the "Business Leader and Humanitarian of the Year Award" from the Jewish Vocational Service [1].
  • On March 16, 2007 Purdue University received a $100 million endowment from the Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering. The endowment is the largest research gift ever at the university, and will create the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue.
    1. ^ Board of Trustees, University of Southern California, Accessed April 13, 2008.

[edit] Quote

  • "When my success exceeded my expectations, I began to think of a way to return to society what it has given to me."

[edit] External links