When Norton Simon Inc. CEO David Mahoney lost his bid to buy out the conglomerate in 1983, he suddenly found himself out of a job.
He struggled with retirement for a few years. Then the former advertising man and top executive applied his sharply honed promotional skills to a new venture: selling brain research.
In a few short years, he became what the New York Times called "one of the foremost lay experts in neuroscience," raising the public profile of, and millions of dollars for, a field that had never had such a vigorous and well-connected advocate.
Called the Mary Lasker of his generation by Nobel laureate James Watson--a reference to Mary Woodard Lasker, the philanthropic dynamo behind the National Cancer Institute and other major biomedical research programs--Mahoney died Monday at his Palm Beach, Fla., home. He was 76.
Mahoney was the chairman and CEO of the New York-based Charles A. Dana Foundation, founded in 1950 to support health and education programs. Under his leadership, the foundation shifted its focus in the health field to neuroscience, committing $34 million to brain research over the past two decades. He helped open up communication among brain researchers around the world and pushed them to take their case to the public through various initiatives, including a 1997 campaign called Brain Awareness Week.
Mahoney established the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a consortium of 200 of the world's leading brain researchers, including seven Nobel Prize winners. He spurred the creation of the foundation's Brain-Body Institute, which raises awareness of the links between the brain and common killers such as heart disease, cancer and strokes.
"This is the best marketing job I've ever been involved in," he told an interviewer several years ago. "We're on the verge of breakthroughs you can't believe."
The Bronx-born Mahoney was a captain in the U.S. Army infantry in Japan during World War II. He attended the University of Pennsylvania on a basketball scholarship, then went to the Wharton School at night on another scholarship. During the day he worked in the mail room of Ruthrauff & Ryan, a New York advertising agency. His rise was so swift that by age 25 he had become one of Madison Avenue's youngest vice presidents.
