The times and triumphs of Jack
Whitehead, biomedical entrepreneur extraordinaire
By Eric Bender
When Leonard Skeggs arrived at
Jack Whitehead’s family business with his blood-analysis invention, it didn’t
seem like a great moment in medical history.
In 1954,
Skeggs already was an accomplished medical researcher and innovator. His device
addressed the major problem of slow and sloppy manual blood analyses that had
plagued his clinical work.
His
machine, though, was a crazy-looking contraption that had been turned down
repeatedly by larger manufacturers. And when Skeggs tried to demonstrate it,
with blood samples from himself and his wife, it didn’t work.
But Jack
Whitehead loved the concept behind the machine: continuous analysis of a stream
of blood samples. He inked a deal with Skeggs, and his firm, Technicon, ended
up pouring millions of dollars into making the device practical.
Launched
in 1957, the AutoAnalyzer was backed by Whitehead’s sheer determination and
hard-won expertise in creating, selling, supporting and litigating over medical
equipment. It revolutionized clinical analysis, and the huge success of the
AutoAnalyzer and its heirs made Whitehead one of the richest men in the
Two years
after the public offering, Whitehead, with the help of Skeggs and other
distinguished friends and advisors, launched a 10-year quest to make what
became Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
On that journey,
as he had all his life, Whitehead made indelible impressions on his business
associates, friends and family. Decades later, they tell about his unquenchable
enthusiasm, his addiction to skiing (and astonishing misadventures on the
slopes), his blunt talk and ability to ask the one absolutely key question, his
commitment to philanthropy, the red carnation that he wore every day on his
lapel, and the time he woke up from heart surgery and fixed a broken machine in
the intensive-care unit.
“He would
push you to see how far you could go yourself,” says Dina McCabe, a friend and
the wife of longtime Whitehead Institute Board Member Robert McCabe. “He had
this great joy for life, and it was contagious.”
Just as
striking was Whitehead’s single-minded pursuit of excellence in biomedicine and
the rest of life. “He was a man who believed in himself,” says David Baltimore,
Founding Director of Whitehead Institute. “I think that is a characteristic of
great entrepreneurs, for better or worse. They are people who have a vision and
are not afraid to follow that vision.”
Born Edwin C. Weiskopf in
“My
father's parents divorced when he was a preteen, and his mother went to work
selling real estate in
An only
child, Jack liked sports, as he did all his life, and he was proud that he
played football in high school. He dropped out of the
In the late nineteenth century,
Jack’s grandfather Abraham Weiskopf started a firm that sold lab equipment,
mostly glassware imported from
During the
mid-1940s, around the time Jack joined Technicon, the company’s headliner was
the AutoTechnicon, the world's first automated slide preparation machine. “By
standardizing the preparation of medical slides for microscopic viewing, the
AutoTechnicon moved histopathology from an art to a science and greatly
advanced the accuracy of medical diagnoses,” says John Whitehead. “Two
pathologists looking at a tissue could start to agree.”
“In the
early years, the company’s success was limited,” recalls Henry Allen, a cousin who
later worked for Technicon. “Jack gradually eased himself into the position of
power. He and his father sat at desks that faced each other. They argued a
great deal, but somehow they got along.”
“Jack was
a tough cookie,” Allen adds. “He was difficult to work for and to work with at
times, but he usually was right. Not everyone loved him every moment, but they
respected him.”
“He was
very smart, very curious, very energetic, and optimistic enough to want to try
finding new solutions to old medical problems,” says John Whitehead. Among the
results were devices that greatly speeded up chromatography, freed a generation
of polio victims from the prison of iron lungs, introduced modern
electrocardiography, and made large-scale battlefield blood transfusions practical,
he says.
Technicon
remained mildly profitable but small—until the AutoAnalyzer hit the market in
1957.
With its
offbeat design, based on analyzing a stream of blood samples separated by air
bubbles, the AutoAnalyzer did away with the slow, clumsy and error-prone manual
approaches to blood analysis. “You could automatically test the samples and get
answers in minutes rather than days,” says Henry Allen. “The quality of
analyses enormously advanced; you could do hundreds or thousands of tests relatively
inexpensively and very reliably.”
This was a
genuine breakthrough, and after painful experiences with Technicon’s other
innovations, Whitehead knew how to capitalize on it. The AutoAnalyzer proved
successful in clinical use and the results were presented in public
conferences. Its customers received in-depth training on how to use it
properly, and Technicon swiftly backed up its patent rights in court. Over the
years, industrial uses (such as water quality studies) emerged for the device
and its successors.
Technicon
“made laboratory testing reliable and timely, and thereby a fundamental part of
modern medicine,” says John Whitehead. “Its annual business rapidly grew to
tens, and then hundreds of millions.”
When his
father died in 1968, Jack Whitehead inherited a large company, and one with
essentially no debt.
“Jack was worth a billion dollars
on paper,” says Lester Hochberg, tax attorney and friend. “There weren’t many
billionaires then.”
But in his
final years at Technicon, “he hated it,” says his daughter Susan Whitehead. “He
really liked when it was at the front-end of the industry, and it was about
discovery and breakthroughs and creating something quite new. Once it became a
big business, a volume-driven business, he really did not enjoy it at all.”
“The
skills that you need to start a company and grow it are very different from
what you need to run a major international company,” comments John Whitehead.
That was very frustrating for Whitehead—and those who worked for him. “There
was one weekend when all the top executives quit; I was one of them.”
Whitehead
had planned to eventually turn over Technicon to his children. Increasingly,
however, this looked like a mixed blessing, one his children didn’t want.
Instead,
Whitehead, who had often told his children and stepchildren that “you’ve got to
give back,” decided to make a different contribution, in his lifetime and on
his terms. He would create a research institute, and that would function as a
legacy to his children.
“In the
early 1970s, my dad began to seriously pursue the idea of a research
institute,” says John Whitehead. “He asked Jim Shannon, a former NIH Director,
and Irvine Page, head of research at the Cleveland Clinic, along with Leonard
Skeggs, to help him. (Skeggs eventually became one of the original members of
the Whitehead Institute board.) The idea was to do in an academic setting what
Technicon had been doing commercially for decades: applied biology and
engineering.”
Over the
years, as he met with top experts in medicine and research, that concept
gradually shifted from clinical toward basic research.
“He was
patient with it,” says son Peter Whitehead. “He listened to people. I can’t
think of anything else in his life that he would dedicate 10 frustrating years
to doing.”
After
meeting with several universities, Whitehead and his associates struck a deal
with Duke, announced with much press coverage. Unfortunately, while Duke
administrators proved both enthusiastic and generous, the deal fell through,
also with much publicity.
Whitehead was unsuccessful in his
attempts to recruit a research director, while Duke executives and researchers
became uneasy about Whitehead’s terms. (For their trouble, he later awarded a
parting gift of $10 million to aid young biomedical researchers.)
“Jack
realized that he had done things in the wrong order,” comments Arthur Brill,
family friend and longtime Secretary of Whitehead Institute. ”It would have
been better to first recruit a director and then, together, pick a host
institution.”
Whitehead
had planned to have his new research institute hold the stock of Technicon. But
over the years, he found that he needed to demonstrate to prospective partners
that he could produce cash in hand. In 1980, he ended up selling the company to
Revlon, then a major player in medical care. He walked away with Revlon stock
that would provide funding for his long-deferred dream.
In the early 1980s, Whitehead and
his associates began talking with David Baltimore, then at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1975 for his discovery of how
retroviruses multiply.
“David and
Jack could reach understandings quite quickly,” comments Robert Weinberg,
Whitehead Institute Founding Member. “Both were very decisive people who
thought quickly. They rapidly found a meeting of the minds.”
“David
convinced my dad that if he wanted the best and brightest scientists, he needed
to focus more on basic research and less on applied bioengineering,” says John
Whitehead. “Further, David argued that the best environment for such an
institute would be in a major urban setting with an existing research
infrastructure, like
“I told
them that the field that was then exploding, and around which one could build a
great institution, was developmental biology,” recalls
“There was
great skepticism about Jack Whitehead,”
After
“In particular, he didn’t
understand why MIT was not overjoyed,”
In an era
when academics viewed commerce far more suspiciously than they do now, many MIT
faculty members were alarmed by the potential deal. The debate flared across
the campus in 1981—partly for good reasons, partly not.
“There
were entirely legitimate concerns about creating full MIT faculty members who
were employees of another organization,” says John Pratt, former Whitehead
Institute Associate Director. “But some people thought this was all a scheme of
Jack Whitehead to make a bundle off the intelligence of MIT. What was wrong
with that argument was that we were setting up a non-profit, where no
individual had any equity. He really was being accused of outrageous things.”
“It was a
nasty year,” says
When the
MIT faculty finally voted overwhelmingly in favor of the affiliation,
With the
green light, the Institute roared into being. Twenty months later, 9
“My dad
and David Baltimore had a very fruitful, productive and constructive
relationship,” says John Whitehead. “With their energy, creativity, varied
experiences and willingness to consider different viewpoints for the benefit of
the collective enterprise, they built an incredibly successful place.”
Because of tax concerns, Whitehead had no seat on the Institute’s board. But
“he was really, really active here,” says Susan Whitehead. “He adored this
place. He spent a lot of time here.”
“The
Institute had made quite a stir by the time he died,” says Arthur Brill. “It
was Camelot-like for many years and, almost from the outset, had an
international reputation for excellence. That was extremely gratifying to
Jack.”
“Jack died
a happy man,” says Robert Weinberg. “From all points of view, the Institute was
extremely successful. It became one of the top five biomedical research
institutions in less than a decade. No one had the right to expect it, but
that’s what happened.”
“He knew
many people in the biomedical community, and they would pat him on the back,”
says
Whitehead, who suffered multiple
heart attacks and underwent several surgeries, told the story of waking up from
heart surgery in the intensive care unit. “He was conscious, and there was a
malfunction in one of the medical machines,” says Lester Hochberg. “It was a
Sunday and there was no maintenance man or mechanic around. He took a look at
the machine and realized it was one of Technicon’s. He asked the nurse to bring
a screwdriver, opened it up and fixed it.”
This
incident sounds like Whitehead, family and friends agree. One of his favorite
sayings was "The only truth is in action."
“He was
capable of great detail, but details were not big with him,” comments Peter
Whitehead. “He resolutely was a big-picture guy. He was a great enthusiast, a
terrific salesman. He was passionate, and ethical considerations were very
important to him.”
An only
child, Whitehead became a famously social adult. “He liked people broadly,”
says Susan Whitehead. “He was very, very curious about what made people tick.
He liked anybody’s life story.”
Whitehead
loved parties and dancing. He enjoyed asking a serious question at dinner,
going around the table to get everyone’s opinion, and probing away at the
replies—a process that could be more than a little intimidating.
John,
Peter and Susan Whitehead are the children of Constance Stein, Whitehead’s
first wife. He married four times, and helped to bring up five stepchildren,
who remember him fondly. “He wasn’t very good at showing his emotions, but he
was there for you when you needed him,” says stepdaughter Camilla Blair. “He
was a great mentor to me,” says stepson Evan Jones, whom Whitehead helped to
form Digene, a biotech firm now capitalized at more than a billion dollars. “He
would always steer me in the right direction.”
In
Whitehead’s final years, the extended clan and friends would gather each
holiday season in Vail,
“If you knew Jack at all, you went
skiing with him,” says Lester Hochberg. “If you weren’t that good of a skier,
you paid dearly. He skied like a madman, without any regard for his age and
infirmities.”
“My dad
was an enthusiast; and whatever he did, he did to the hilt,” John Whitehead
says. “On every ski trip, he invariably ended up going over a cliff at least
once, or getting stuck in a tree, or in some other amazing mishap. He played
tennis and squash the same way—as if his life depended on each point.”
In 1992,
while playing a vigorous game of squash, Whitehead collapsed on the court with
a fatal heart attack. “He was playing his regular weekend squash opponent, to
whom he had never lost a series,” his son remarks. “Some people say that
collapsing on the court was the only way he could save what until then had been
a perfect record!”
“He could
be a pretty tough guy,” says Susan Whitehead. “He also was a completely
embracing kind of person. And when you were in need, he was just phenomenal… He
actively enjoyed his life. That’s a really unusual characteristic. I love him
for that.”
“He never
did anything in a small way,” says Robert Weinberg. “He was a person of grand
gestures. He felt that he could do almost anything if he tried hard enough and
invested enough money and got the right minds brought to bear. It’s people like
him who change the world.”