Serious science in the Magic City

From the March issue: As you fly into Miami from the west, you might be able to pick out the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum on the campus of Florida International University. If you fly in from the east, you’ll see the nearly completed Patricia and Phillip Frost Science Museum, hugging the shoreline of Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami. If you visit the bucolic campus of the University of Miami, you can attend a concert or sit in on recitals at the Frost School of Music, known for its noted jazz program.

And it’s the Frosts’ hope that in a few years, students, scientists and researchers will be pushing the envelope of scientific research at the Frost Institutes for Science and Engineering at UM. In January, the couple announced a $100 million gift to fund the new endeavor, which they hope will turn Miami into a world-class science and technology destination. 

For more than 40 years, Dr. Phillip Frost, the former chairman of the department of dermatology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, has been a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, helping to establish the generic pharmaceuticals business with IVAX, a company he sold to Teva pharmaceuticals just over a decade ago for $7.4 billion. His wife, Patricia, was the principal of the Henry S. West Laboratory School, an innovative public elementary school on the UM campus. [more]