Hooper Foundation (The George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research, SF)

This foundation was established in 1913 under an endowment by the widow of San Francisco lumber merchant and philanthropist, George Williams Hooper. Its broad purpose was to conduct investigations in the sciences of hygiene, medicine, and surgery, and to study the nature and causes of disease, together with methods of prevention and treatment. Originally a separate institution administered directly by the Regents, the Hooper Foundation was made an organized institute within the School of Medicine in 1958.

The Hooper Foundation early established its pre-eminence in the field of infectious diseases and diseases transmitted to man by animals. Through Hooper research, methods were devised for killing the organisms whose toxins cause botulism. These methods made possible the growth of a safe canning industry in America. Significant contributions to the treatment and prevention of plague, carried to man by rat-borne fleas, have been made at the Hooper Foundation and the disease continues to be an object of the foundation's research. Extensive researches into rabies and ornithosis, a disease transmissible to man from birds, have also been made. Particular attention is given to the ways in which ornithosis is transmitted by ticks and mites.

A current special concern of the Hooper Foundation is with health problems of the Pacific area, from California to the Asian

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coast. This reflects the influence of the International Center for Medical Research and Training (ICMRT), whose headquarters are in the Hooper Foundation. This center, established at the University of California in 1960 by the National Institutes of Health, is the joint collaboration of the School of Medicine at San Francisco, the School of Public Health at Berkeley, and the School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis. Its research and research training is directed toward international health problems, and it has major facilities in Malaya and Singapore.

The foundation's new research program on human ecology is based on a definition of health as the ability to rally from a broad range of intense insults--physical, chemical, infectious, or psychological. Insults being studied are mostly infectious, for these can be used to study adaptation generally. Host-parasite relationships, the population-controlling mechanisms of animals, and “biological clocks” all offer promising approaches. The adaptability of individuals is influenced by the larger systems of groups; therefore the latter must be studied in the context of the population avalanche and urbanization. The Hooper Foundation includes a Division of Medical Anthropology, to which Pacific area studies contribute.

The Hooper Foundation is scheduled to occupy a part of the new Health Science Instruction and Research Building in spring, 1966. Other facilities operated by the foundation include a field station at the Hastings Reservation in the Carmel Valley, a Seafood Research Laboratory, and a Pacific Health Information Center. Funds for the Hooper Foundation come from various government grants as well as from endowments and a University budget.--RHC

REFERENCES: J. R. Audy, “Functions of the Hooper Foundation” (unpubl., 1959); J. R. Audy, Letter to Centennial Editor, November 23, 1964; “The George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research,” President's Report to the Regents (May, 1963); Karl F. Meyer, Notes on History of Hooper Foundation (May, 1960).