

Drug-delivery pioneer wins £1m engineering prize - pcrh
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31111835

======
hga
Woa. When I read his current MIT department affiliations, I smelled a rat and
I was right.

In 1988 some professors in the School of Science who were also administrators
managed a totally ... irregular coup and killed off the Department of Applied
Biological Sciences (formerly Food and Nutrition, Course 20), claiming the
department including its professors were not of MIT quality. That's something
that Visiting Committees judge
([http://web.mit.edu/corporation/visiting.html](http://web.mit.edu/corporation/visiting.html)),
not self-interested professors who got envious that another department was
getting way "too much" money all of a sudden, 10s of millions, that's when
biotechnology was really taking off.

In essence, as part of this scam they tried to _destroy_ Professor Langer ...
but it turned out the Institute was in no position to slander and libel these
professors, those remarks were quickly withdrawn, and homes were found for the
tenured professors. Although as I heard just about everyone else was left in
the lurch, e.g. a new professor, and the new grad students, one of whom was a
roommate, were out of their positions, of course having turned down other
offers. I wonder if Langer was able to keep his grad students ... that would
have been tricky in many many ways, e.g. science and engineering graduate
departments (and I hope others) have very tough qualification systems that are
independent of research.

Anyway, he at least has the last laugh, has even been made one of the 11
current Institute Professors, who are essentially the very best of the very
best.

And the professors who engineered that coup? I was told at the time they would
never be given a position of trust in MIT Administration, and one notably went
on to become the head of the CIA (I am not making this up), where he was both
awful (this includes contemporary reports I heard from people under him at the
time) and grossly violated Sensitive Compartmented Information
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Inform...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information)),
something that should have sent him to prison but of course resulted in
nothing but a last day in office Presidential pardon.

------
dig1
Although his work is impressive, this: "and he has more than 1,000 patents
granted or pending for his inventions" makes me really sad.

His work will became part of some company (if not yet) and will benefit only
those with deep pockets...

------
IndianAstronaut
Bob Langer is much more than just a drug delivery pioneer. He is the one that
helped kick off the field of biomaterials. He helped discover novel materials
for things like stents, skin implants, materials to grow cardiovascular cells
on, etc.

------
rounce
Am I the only one that first glanced this as: "Drug-dealing pioneer wins £1m
engineering prize"?

~~~
soylentcola
I read it correctly but after all of the Ross Ulbricht news lately, my first
thought was along similar lines.

