Doheny Eye Institute Celebrates 75th Anniversary

Doheny Eye Institute’s rich heritage of vision research and patient care began with a woman of great heart and great hope: Mrs. Carrie Estelle Doheny. After experiencing a sudden catastrophic vision loss from glaucoma, she founded the Doheny Eye Foundation in 1947 with the ambitious mission: “To further the conservation, improvement and restoration of human eyesight.”

Mrs. Doheny called upon her trusted ophthalmologist, Dr. A. Ray Irvine, Sr., and his two sons, Drs. S. Rodman Irvine and A. Ray Irvine, Jr., to establish Los Angeles’ first eye pathology laboratory on the ground floor of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Eager to advance Mrs. Doheny’s goal to create a major vision research institute, the Irvines strongly advocated for a close association with an academic medical school, and Doheny’s trustees voted to affiliate with USC in 1961.

Over the next decades, the finest vision scientists, clinicians, faculty, and residents—along with the outstanding leadership of Doheny President Stephen Ryan, MD, and Medical Director Ronald Smith, MD —steadily elevated Doheny to the forefront of ophthalmological training, research, and patient care.

In December 2013, Doheny Eye Institute and UCLA’s Stein Eye Institute signed a 99-year Affiliation Agreement, and Doheny-affiliated physicians and researchers became UCLA Department of Ophthalmology faculty members.

In conjunction with their 75th anniversary, Doheny Eye Institute, a non-profit research organization, opened a new headquarters in Pasadena on June 23, 2022. The vision-science campus features 25,000 square feet of dedicated research space, the Doheny Image Reading Center and Analysis Laboratory, as well as a conference center to enhance academic excellence. A state-of-the-art Doheny Eye Center UCLA, located on the Pasadena campus, will begin offering patients a full spectrum of eye health care in 2024.