Jerry M. Sudarsky, 2008
Jerry M. Sudarsky, principal founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, attended the University of Iowa from 1936 to 1939 on a scholarship, where he was pitcher on the baseball team. He briefly spent some time with the Boston Red Sox in spring training before discovering his calling in the biotech industry. Returning to school, he obtained a degree in chemical engineering from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

In 1946 Sudarsky founded his first company, Pacific Yeast Products, later named Bioferm Corporation, one of the first biotech companies in the world. Bioferm pioneered the production of vitamin B₁₂ and created and marketed the first bio-insecticide products. Sudarsky sold the company in 1960 and joined the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), a United Nations agency dedicated to helping underdeveloped nations develop and improve their industrial base. Working for UNIDO, he helped found Israel Chemicals and served as its chairman from 1968 to 1972. He later served as vice chairman for Daylin, Inc., and Jacobs Engineering Group.

In 1994, using his extensive experience in the design, engineering, construction, and operations of commercial properties, Sudarsky created Health Science Properties, now known as Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a company that provides laboratory space to the biotech industry. Three years after its inception, Alexandria went public on the New York Stock Exchange with fewer than 10 employees.

Sudarsky and his wife, Milly, have supported many worthy causes and institutions, including the Sudarsky Biochemical Building and the Sudarsky Center for Computational Biology at Hebrew University.

Eugene Garfield, 2007
Eugene Garfield, noted innovator and inventor in the field of citation analysis, received a B.S. and a master's degree in library science from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in structural linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. His career in scientific communication and information began in 1951 when he joined the Welch Medical Indexing Project at Johns Hopkins University. The goal of the project was to examine problems of medical information retrieval and the application of new methods to indexing biomedical literature. The Welch Project planted the seeds for information discovery and recovery in scientific communication and information science that have distinguished Garfield's career.

In 1955 Garfield produced a contents-page publication covering the social sciences and management literature. Two years later he began producing a similar service covering the literature of interest to pharmaceutical companies. In 1958 Garfield and Joshua Lederberg collaborated on Genetics Citation Index. Garfield began regular publication of the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1964 through the Institute for Scientific Information, the name his firm assumed in 1960. The SCI was recognized as a basic and fundamental innovation in scientific communication and information science. It covered virtually all disciplines and fields of science, comprehensively indexing all types of sources. Most importantly, the SCI uniquely indexed the references cited in the articles it indexed.

Garfield went on to create new tools including Index Chemicus, Current Contents, the Genuine Article, citation indexes for the social sciences (SSCI), as well as the arts and humanities (A&HCI), Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings and Books, and others. In 1986 he founded The Scientist, a biweekly newspaper for the research professional, which reports on news and developments within the sciences. He has published more than 1,000 essays in Current Contents over the past 25 years and has published and edited commentaries by the authors of more than 5,000 Citation Classics.

• The CHF Oral History Collection is comprised of over 400 interviews with leading figures in the chemical and molecular sciences and related process industries.  Learn more about Eugene Garfield in his own words.

Bolte was born and raised in Philadelphia. After military service in Alaska during the Korean War, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from LaSalle University. He holds a doctorate of humane letters from Mt. St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Following his graduation from LaSalle, Bolte worked in an entry-level position for a small Philadelphia firm involved with the facilitation of exports. This early experience in exporting, combined with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, led him to establish his own firm in 1966, aptly named the R.J. Bolte Company. Six years later, the company, as a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions, became BDP International.

With Bolte at the helm, BDP International became a customer-driven company, focusing on the importance of information, logistics, and communications to international shippers. From the beginning, BDP has combined the old-fashioned art of listening to its customers with a cutting-edge approach to solutions in logistics and transportation. Today BDP can credit much of its success to its early application of information technology–based solutions to the complex logistics needs of global shippers. The company has grown from a handful of employees in Philadelphia to more than 1,800 worldwide and now operates freight logistics centers in more than 20 cities throughout the United States, with a network of subsidiaries, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships in 140 countries.