Joyce is a “Jersey girl.” She attended Douglass College, the women’s division of Rutgers University. On arriving, she thought she would become a medical technologist. Fortunately, one of her female professors, recognizing her student’s gifts, urged her to pursue a degree in microbiology and chemistry instead. Joyce heeded her professor’s advice and after graduation was offered a position at Merck as a biochemistry researcher.
At the time, biochemistry was quite a new field. At first, Joyce was involved in discovering cardiovascular and anti-inflammatory drugs; she then searched for anti-viral compounds (such as those that combat the common cold). A mere two months after arriving at Merck, she met an accomplished research scientist: she and Dr. Georg Albers-Schonberg would marry two years later.
After 13 years at Merck, Joyce decided to take a new direction. Her choices: pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry or earn a law or business degree. After much thought, she decided that a business degree would give her the most flexibility and options. Joyce entered the M.B.A. program at NYU. She found the program highly stimulating and challenging; the subjects she studied were unlike any she had ever studied before. Ever practical, she specialized in the two areas she knew “would always be of use”: finance and marketing.
On graduating from NYU, Joyce accepted a position with First Boston—later Credit Suisse—as an equity analyst specializing in healthcare services, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies: a perfect fit. She would first learn as much as she possibly could about each company and then meet with the company’s management, all in an attempt to glean the company’s prospects for growth (and thus earnings) in the near term. She would then make a recommendation to First Boston’s clients—pension funds, mutual funds, and others: buy, sell, or hold. Institution Investor often ranked Joyce as one of the top analysts in her field.
After 15 years with First Boston, Joyce went from the “sell side” to the “buy side” of Wall Street: she joined Deerfield Management, a hedge fund in New York that specializes in healthcare investments. Joyce thoroughly enjoyed her time at Deerfield—she was able to use the whole of her knowledge and experience, in both science and business—and remained with the firm for five years.
Georg spent his early childhood in Berlin. He grew up steeped in matters scientific: both his grandfather and father were scientists. Albers-Schonberg grand-pere, Heinrich Ernst Albers-Schonberg, was a gynecologist and early radiologist who greatly refined X-ray technology. Indeed, so superior were his X-rays that he received the grand prize at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. He discovered a rare condition, osteopetrosis, the excessive calcification of bones; in honor of that discovery, that condition is called the Albers-Schonberg Disease. Though he learned over time that X-rays damage human tissue, that knowledge came too late: he died of cancer at the age of 56. Albers-Schonberg pere was a chemist whose specialization was ceramics. Following World War II, a French officer who was billeted with Georg’s father and mother helped them make their way through the Russian zone surrounding Berlin. Following a sojourn in France, Georg’s father joined a firm in New Jersey; there, he developed memory elements out of ceramics for early computers, work for which he received a great many patents.
At the beginning of the war, Georg had joined his grandparents in Switzerland. He attended high school in that country and initially intended to become a physician, but over time decided to become a research scientist instead. He earned a chemistry degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—the “MIT of Switzerland”—and then crossed the street to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich; he specialized in identifying chemical compounds from plants. On receiving his Ph.D., Georg remained at the University for two years as an instructor. He did three years of post-doctoral research at MIT and then joined Merck as a research chemist.
The Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming had fortuitously discovered penicillin in 1929. Fleming had recognized its importance, but the chemical nature of the antibiotic had remained unknown throughout the 1930s. Only during World War II did intensive collaboration among many academic and industrial laboratories in Britain and the U.S.—including Merck—uncover that nature and develop large-scale production. For Merck, it was the beginning of a long interest in the discovery of other important so-called natural products, work in which Georg was deeply involved throughout his career at the company. Drug discoveries included the antibiotic Primaxin, the first of the cholesterol-lowering drugs (Mevacor), and the antiparasitic drug Ivomec, which has the potential for eradicating River Blindness in tropical countries; Merck donates the drug for this intensive global effort.
In retirement, Joyce and Georg travel quite a bit. They particularly enjoy cruises and have gone by ship around Australia and the Greek Isles, on the Black and North seas, to St. Petersburg, and along the coast of Alaska. They are also opera aficionados; they are, for instance, subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera. They also serve on the boards of a number of nonprofit organizations. Joyce is on the Board of Directors of the Princeton Medical Center Foundation and on the Board of Overseers of Rutgers University; she is also co-chair of The Douglass Campaign, the fundraising campaign for Douglass College. Georg serves on the board of trustees of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to Joyce’s service as a foundation director, she and Georg have been generous donors to the Foundation. Why? Joyce: “When I first moved to Princeton, I thought it was wonderful that the town had its own hospital—and such a fine one at that. Having such a hospital means that Princeton can attract superb doctors. I learned early on that the Princeton community is very supportive of its hospital. At first, Georg and I made gifts to the Foundation’s Annual Fund. Seven years ago, I was asked to join the Foundation’s board—an invitation I accepted with pleasure. Not only do my interests and experience lie in healthcare, I also think it is so important that a community have excellent healthcare. And it has been exciting to be part of the new hospital project; that hospital is such a wonderful asset for the greater Princeton community.”
Joyce and Georg recently decided to contribute to the Princeton Medical Center Foundation in another way: through a charitable gift annuity. They signed a simple contract and funded the gift annuity; they received an income-tax charitable deduction for their gift, and they will receive quarterly payments, quite favorably taxed, for the remainder of their lives.“A charitable gift annuity is a painless way of making a contribution to an important nonprofit—and thus to the community,” she said. “What is more, a gift annuity offers one of the better returns you can find now. For us, it was a clear and easy decision.”
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