David Hamburg papers, 1949-2003

Born in 1925 in Evansville, Indiana, David Alan Hamburg attended Indiana University and its medical school, receiving his M.D. in 1947. In the 1950s, Hamburg, a psychiatrist, distinguished himself as a pioneering investigator of stress and anxiety beginning at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, D.C. (1952-53) and then at the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training at the Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago (1953-56). Hamburg continued his research at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA. As chair of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, Hamburg established a new department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, distinguished by its breadth of research on behavioral biology, especially in relation to mental illness. While chief of the adult psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, 1958-61), he created one of the nation's first clinical research centers to combine psychological and biological factors in studying depression.

In 1975, while serving as Reed-Hodgson Professor of Human Biology at Stanford (1972-76), Hamburg was confronted with a crisis that would re-direct his focus from psychiatric research to contemporary social problems. Four of Hamburg's students, studying primate behavior under the direction of Jane Goodall at a remote research station in Gombe, Tanzania, were abducted by armed rebels from Zaire (now Congo) and held for ransom and other demands. Hamburg immediately flew to Gombe and spent 10 weeks negotiating their release.

His vivid exposure to violence, disease and poverty during this time prompted him to devote his energies to using science to help meet social needs. In 1975 he became president of the Institute of Medicine, the health policy arm of the National Academy of Sciences, where he developed major initiatives on health and behavior, health promotion and disease prevention, and the health needs of the underserved as well as developing nations. From 1980 to 1983, Hamburg served as director of the university-wide Division of Health Policy Research and Education and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA., applying his signature cross-disciplinary approach to health policy issues.

After David Hamburg became president of Carnegie Corporation of New York in December 1982, the Corporation sought to mobilize the best scientific and scholarly talent and thinking to address contemporary issues from early childhood to international relations, using a comprehensive inter-disciplinary approach.

During Hamburg's tenure as president, the Corporation placed a priority on the education and healthy development of children and adolescents and the preparation of youth for a scientific, technological and knowledge-driven world. Three major study groups were formed to cover the educational and developmental needs of children and youth from birth to age 15: the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development (1986), the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children (1991), and the Carnegie Task Force on Learning in the Primary Grades (1994). Jointly with the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corporation also financed the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, whose report, What Matters Most (1996), provided a framework and agenda for teacher education reform across the country. Characteristically these study groups drew on the knowledge generated by the previous Carnegie grant programs and from relevant fields and inspired follow up grantmaking to implement the recommendations. At that time David Hamburg also chaired the Forum on Adolescence, a joint effort of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council to assess adolescent health and development.

In 1984, the Corporation established the Carnegie Commission on Education and the Economy. Through its major publication, A Nation Prepared (1986), the foundation reaffirmed the role of the teacher as the "best hope" for ensuring educational excellence in elementary and secondary education. An outgrowth of that report was the establishment, a year later, of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to consider ways of attracting able candidates to the teaching profession and recognizing and retaining them. At the Corporation's initiative, the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued two groundbreaking reports, Science for All Americans (1989) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1993), which recommended a common core of learning in science, mathematics, and technology for all citizens and helped set national standards of achievement in these domains.

Hamburg introduced an entirely new focus for the Corporation --- the danger to world peace posed by the superpower confrontation and weapons of mass destruction. The foundation underwrote scientific study of the feasibility of the proposed federal Strategic Defense Initiative and joined the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in supporting the analytic work of a new generation of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation experts. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Corporation grants helped promote the concept of cooperative security among erstwhile adversaries and projects to build democratic institutions in the former Soviet Union and central Europe. An important undertaking was the Prevention of Proliferation Task Force, coordinated under a grant to the Brookings Institution, which inspired the Nunn–Lugar Amendment to the Soviet Threat Reduction Act of 1991 aimed at dismantling Soviet nuclear weapons and reducing proliferation risks. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Corporation addressed the problems of interethnic and regional conflict and supported projects seeking to diminish the risks of a wider war stemming from civil strife. Two Carnegie commissions, one on Reducing the Nuclear Danger (1990), the other on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1994), together addressed the full range of dangers associated with human conflict and the use of weapons of mass destruction. The Corporation's thrust in Commonwealth Africa, meanwhile, shifted to women's health and leadership development and the application of science and technology, including new information systems, in fostering research and expertise within indigenous scientific institutions and universities.

Under Hamburg, dissemination achieved even greater primacy in the arsenal of strategic philanthropy. Emphasis was on consolidation and diffusion of the best available knowledge from social science and education research and the use of such research in improving social policy and practice. Major partners in these endeavors were leading institutions that had the capability to influence public thought and action. Hamburg made increasing use of the Corporation's powers to convene leaders and experts across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries to forge policy consensus and promote collaboration.

In the international security field, Hamburg served on many policy advisory boards, including the Executive Panel for the Chief of Naval Operations, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and the U.S.-Soviet Joint Study Group on Crisis Prevention. He was a member of the Defense Policy Board of the Department of Defense and co-chair, with Cyrus Vance, of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. In 2006, Hamburg was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to chair the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention.

In science policy, he chaired several national groups, including committees and advisory boards of the Institute of Medicine, National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation. From 1976 to 1988, he served on the Advisory Committee on Medical Research of the World Health Organization. He was president and board chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 1984 to 1986. The Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government (1988-1993), recommended ways that government at all levels could make more effective use of science and technology in their operations and policies. In 1994, Hamburg was appointed to the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, and in 1996, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

From his background in public health, he brought a preventive orientation to serious problems. Across all of these programs, the common thread, said Hamburg, is the "prevention of rotten outcomes." Hamburg believed that "from child and adolescent development to international relations, the underlying logic is the same: Prevention begins with anticipation, even with long-range foresight, in which research can identify risk factors and point to steps that can be taken to counteract or avoid an undesirable outcome, and pivotal institutions can cooperate in shaping behavior away from risk factors and dangerous directions."

Hamburg served on the boards of Rockefeller University, the Mount Sinai Medical Center, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York City; and the Johann Jacobs Foundation, Zurich. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as author of numerous books and scholarly articles.