$2 Million Prize Offered in Quest to End Blindness by 2020
The Sanford and Susan Greenberg Prize, $2 million in gold bullion, will go to the person or group deemed most responsible for ending blindness by Dec. 13, 2020.
Art Garfunkel and two of his college roommates, Jerry Speyer and Sanford Greenberg, described on their venture's www.endblindnessby2020.com website as part of "a group of dreamers," announced Oct. 18 they will give $2 million in gold bullion to whoever does the most to end blindness by 2020. Their Sanford and Susan Greenberg Prize to End Blindness by 2020 even has a specific final date -- Dec. 13, 2020, chosen because it is the same number of days, 2,978, from the date President John F. Kennedy called for a manned landing by U.S. astronauts on the moon to the day it was successfully accomplished by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
The winner will be selected by a Governing Council whose members are listed on the site, and the Wilmer Eye Institute (http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore will be the administrator of the prize. Dr. Peter J. McDonnell, director of the institute and ophthalmology professor at the institute, is a member of the Governing Council along with Greenberg and five other individuals.
Videos featuring Garfunkel and McDonnell explain the genesis of the project: Greenberg went blind in 1961 at age 19 while still in college, yet he managed to graduate with his class, earn three graduate degrees, serve in several posts in the Johnson and Clinton administrations (including on the Council on Foreign Relations), and found and lead several technology companies. The videos explain that he vowed "to live his life to somehow see an end to blindness."