Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PLANTING A FLAG
Making the Impossible Possible, and the Possible Real
Like so many others who have had a normal life stripped away or never granted, the blind need a village. Sue has been mine, the center of gravity in my life since even before I lost my sight, when she was my girlfriend. But blindness is also its own unique world. Hearing, taste, touch, smell, movement — they all play a key role in the human experience. But if you will forgive me a prejudiced point of view, sight is the true miracle of creation.
To me, the women and men we are gathered here to celebrate are the true pathfinders. Like the great navigators of yore, they have sailed into the void of darkness and are now emerging out the other side armed with charts rich with latitude and longitude. Passage before was impossible. Passage soon will be impossible to deny. These new navigators, these unfolders of the deep mysteries of vision and of the pathways to healing it, will be giving us glimpses of their discoveries as events move along this evening. Prepare please to be amazed.
With these words, Sandy Greenberg opened the December 14, 2020, End Blindness awards ceremony, an unprecedented event featuring an all-star cast of scientific, cultural, business, and political leaders and culminating with the awarding of $3 million in prizes to doctors and researchers from around the world who have been leading the fight to rid the world of blindness.
The Greenberg Prize winners were originally to be honored at the United States Supreme Court, a venue arranged by Sandy’s dear friend and longtime neighbor, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Covid put an end to an in-person event. Instead, the hour-long End Blindness 2020 awards ceremony was streamed worldwide and brought global attention to a crusade that will not cease until, in Sandy’s words, “all God’s children can not only feel the sun shining on their faces, but also witness with their own eyes its rising and its setting.”
In his tribute to the Prize winners, Jerry Speyer — co-founder and chairman of Tishman Speyer and Sandy’s other college roommate, along with Art Garfunkel — cited Winston Churchill’s famous definition of a positive thinker: “The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”
“That’s Sandy,” Speyer told the global audience. “He is the ultimate positive thinker. With the Greenberg Prize, Sandy has shone a light on his fellow positive thinkers around the world. Each of tonight’s honorees saw the invisible, felt the intangible, and achieved the impossible.”
“The prizes this evening are being awarded to those researchers and scientists who have made the greatest progress toward eradicating this ancient scourge,” co-host Susan Greenberg told the global audience. “But this evening is not solely about the blind. These prizes are also being presented on behalf of the parents of a child born blind, who know that their son or daughter will never see their faces.
“They are in recognition of those whose aging parents are slipping into the endless grayness of advanced macular degeneration, the families of those blinded by trauma or limited to menial work by their inability to negotiate a sighted world. These prizes are also on behalf of the loved ones of those who lost their vision to disease just as they were setting off on their adult years – me, for example. Life was wonderful one day; seemingly, in the next few days, it was undone.
“I watched Sandy’s anguish close up, and I saw and inevitably was an integral part of his almost superhuman efforts to rejoin a world that he feared he had been denied. Blindness is, of course, a physical malady first and foremost; by definition, the blind can’t see. But blindness is also a social condition: blindness impacts not just those who lost or are rapidly losing or never had their vision, it impact those of us who love and support them, as well. On behalf of them all — the blind, their loved ones, and the researchers working tirelessly to end blindness now — this evening is dedicated.”
“These prizes are also being presented on behalf of the parents of a child born blind, who know that their son or daughter will never see their faces.”
“The winners of our Visionary awards are people who see far into the future and whose efforts will allow millions to see that future, too. They are laying a path to new insights and starting a journey to new frontiers that we can explore for decades to come.”
— Dr. Jeremy Nathans, Chairman, End Blindness Scientific Advisory Board
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Boston Children’s Hospital F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center
Casey Eye Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, Oregon Health and Science University
Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University
Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research; Vision Care, Inc. as part of Kobe Eye Center
“The recipients of our Outstanding Achievement Prizes have navigated extraordinary challenges and overcome difficult obstacles to achieve real and enduring change. With their actions, they have delivered support and sight to people around the world.”
— Dr. Jeremy Nathans, Chairman, End Blidness Scientific Advisory Board
Division of Experimental Retinal Therapies, Department of Clinical Sciences & Advanced Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Center for Advanced Retinal and Ocular Therapeutics, Department of Ophthalmology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Department of Ophthalmology of the University of Florida
Center for Advanced Retinal and Ocular Therapeutics, Department of Ophthalmology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
The L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, India
Aravind Eye Care System, Madurai, India
Founder and CEO, Bloomberg LP; Philanthropist; Three-Term Mayor of New York City
President Emeritus, the Salk Institute and the Johns Hopkins University
Statesman, United States Senator, Congressman
United States Senator, Cabinet Secretary, Founder of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation
Singer, Poet, and Actor; Winner of Eight Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award
Chairman of the Board, Foundation Fighting Blindness Clinical Research Institute
Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Regents, the Smithsonian Institution
William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology; Director, the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute
Eighty-First Attorney General of the United States
Chairman and Chief Executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation
Founder, Chairman, Tishman Speyer Properties
Chairman of the Board
Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology, the Johns Hopkins University, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
University Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Professor of Genetics and Ophthalmology, Harvard University
Professor of Ophthalmology (Neuroscience), Harvard University
Daniel Nathans Professor; Director, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, the Johns Hopkins University; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Professor and Chair, Ophthalmology; Ophthalmologist-in-Chief, Wills Eye Hospital
University Professor, Department of Neuroscience; Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University; Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Chair, Department of Ophthalmology, Harvard University
Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Director, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University
Professor of Biology and Neurobiology, Director, Stanford Bio-X, Stanford University
Professor of Epidemiology, International Health, and Ophthalmology; Dean Emeritus, Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Johns Hopkins University; Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award
President, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mount Sinai
Blinded in college, Sanford D. Greenberg turned adversity into a mission to end blindness.
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