Arthur M. Sackler

Who was Arthur M. Sackler?

Dr. Arthur Mitchell Sackler was an American psychiatrist, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

He attended New York University School of Medicine and graduated with an M.D. In 1960 Sackler started publication of Medical Tribune, a weekly medical newspaper. He established the Laboratories for Therapeutic Research in 1938. He made his fortune in medical advertising, medical trade publications and the manufacture of over-the-counter drugs.

He established a wide range of medical institutions bearing his name: the Sackler School of Medicine established in 1972 at Tel Aviv University, the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science at New York University in 1980, the Arthur M. Sackler Science Center in 1985 at Clark University, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Health Communications at Tufts University.

Sackler was also a scholar of the arts. He endowed galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University in Beijing, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., and the Jillian & Arthur M. Sackler Wing at the Royal Academy, London. His brother, multimillionaire Mortimer Sackler, endowed the Sackler Library at the University of Oxford, England.