Alfred E. Mann Biography

Alfred E. Mann (born 1925 in Portland, Oregon), also known as Al Mann, is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. According to Forbes magazine, his estimated net worth exceeded $2.2 billion as of 2007, ranking him the 204th richest man in America and the 390th richest man in the world.

Early life and education

Born and raised in Portland, his father was English and mother Polish. His brother is violinist and Juilliard Quartet founding member Robert Mann. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1946 and has remained there ever since. He received his B.S. and M.S. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, doing graduate work in nuclear and mathematical physics. Mann holds honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California, The Johns Hopkins University, Western University, and the Technion " Israel Institute of Technology (Israel).

Business

In 1956, Mann founded Spectrolab, the first of his aerospace companies. While at Spectrolab, an electrooptical systems company, he also founded Heliotek, a semiconductor company, that became a major supplier of solar cells for spacecraft. Among other accomplishments during his tenure, Mann's companies provided the electric power for over 100 spacecraft and constructed one of the lunar experiments. Although he sold both companies to Textron in 1960 (merged into one, Spectrolab is now a subsidiary of Boeing Satellite Systems) he continued to manage them until 1972. After he left those companies to found Pacesetter Systems, which focused on cardiac pacemakers, he sold that company in 1985 and managed it until 1992. It is now a part of St. Jude Medical. Mann then went on to establish MiniMed (insulin pumps and continuous glucose devices, now owned by Medtronic) and Advanced Bionics (neuroprosthetics), which was owned by Boston Scientific from 2004-2008. Boston Scientific and the Advanced Bionics management had agreed to split the company. Under this split, Boston Scientific would own the pain management and other neural stimulation portions and Advanced Bionics would focus on developing, manufacturing and distributing cochlear implants for the restoration of hearing to the deaf.

He is currently involved in several companies, including:

• Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of MannKind Corporation, a biomedical company working on a unique inhalable insulin for the treatment of diabetes and therapeutic vaccines for cancer;
• founder and Chairman of Second Sight, a biomed company working on a retinal prosthesis;
• founder and Chairman of Bioness, a company devoted to applying electrostimulation for functional neural defects such as paralysis;
• founder and Chairman of the Board of Quallion, LLC, a company producing high reliability batteries for medical products and for the military and aerospace industries;
• Chairman of Stellar Microelectronics, an electronic circuit manufacturer for the medical, military and aerospace industries;
• Mann also chairs the Southern California Biomedical Council (SCBC or SoCalBio), a trade association that represents and promotes the growth of the life-science community in the Greater Los Angeles region (see:
• Served on the Board of Directors and was the largest investor in Eclipse Aviation

Philanthropy

Mr. Mann has so far established Alfred E. Mann Institutes for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), known as AMI/USC ($162 million); at Purdue University known as AMI/Purdue ($100 million); and at the Technion known as AMIT ($104 million) are business incubators for medical device development in preparation for commercialization. The Institutes are essentially fully funded. Three other universities were in late stage discussions as of 2006. AMI was founded in 1998 when Alfred Mann made his first $100 million gift to USC, a major private research university in Los Angeles. The total gifted endowment for AMI/USC is $162 million since then.

The Alfred Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering is charged with selecting, establishing and overseeing the institutes, similar to AMI at USC and at other research universities.

Mann is a Life Trustee of the University of Southern California.

Founded in 1985, the Alfred Mann Foundation has several core aims. It aims to work with scientists and research organizations to find bionic solutions for people suffering from debilitating medical impairments

As an alumnus of UCLA, he tried to make a substantial monetary gift to his alma mater to fund a bioengineering institute. However, the donation failed over Mr. Mann's desire to retain control over patents and patent revenues generated by the institute. The $162 million gift eventually went to USC, a private institution that agreed to his terms.

On March 16, 2007 Purdue University received a $100 million endowment from the Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering. The endowment is the largest research gift ever at the university and created the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue. However, AMI Purdue was closed and the $100 million endowment from the MANN Foundation was rescinded in early 2012. Reasons for the withdrawal of the endowment at the end of the 5-year trial period centered on a lack of appropriate management of technology resources by members of Purdue AMI and Purdue Research Foundation and a lack of production of quality projects.

Personal life

Mann has been married four times and has seven children. He divorced his first wife Beverly, with whom he had three sons, in 1957. Mann had three more children with his second wife, whom he divorced in 1973. He divorced his third wife, Susan, in 1997.

He is currently married to Claude Mann and adopted her daughter. Although not of Jewish heritage like her husband, Claude was born in a concentration camp during World War II. Her father was active in the French Resistance and had been sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews from Nazi soldiers.