The Martinos Gift (Introduction)

If you were to plot the history of the Martinos Center on a sheet of paper, it would look something like a step function, to borrow a term from the mathematics and physics that underlies much of the Center’s work: that is, a function whose graph looks like a stairway, or a series of steps. The first of these, of course, was its formation in about 1980. The next major step was the move to the Navy Yard in 1989, and then the introduction of functional MRI in 1991 and 1992.

Eight years later, the Center had another defining moment when Greek shipping magnate Thanassis Martinos and his wife Marina extended a gift of $20 million to fund a biomedical imaging research center named for their daughter, Athinoula A. Martinos, who had passed away several years before. The gift would enable an important expansion of the NMR Center, facilitating countless new breakthroughs and launching the careers of a generation of new scientists.