Sweet dreams are made of this

The new Ellen and Melvin Gordon Center for Integrative Science, Ellen Gordon announced at the April 26 ribbon-cutting that formally opened the $200 million facility designed to cross traditional boundaries between physics, chemistry, and biology, “will be a place where ideas—and, of course, Tootsie Rolls—are shared.”

She wasn’t kidding. Gordon, president of Tootsie Roll Industries, and her husband, Melvin, the firm’s chairman of the board, have asked that the building—two wings encompassing 400,000 square feet at 929 E. 57th Street—be stocked with Tootsie Rolls and other company candies.

It’s a sweet footnote to a major science story. When the Gordon Center is fully occupied next fall, it will house 100 senior scientists as well as 700 students and other researchers, taking advantage of state-of-the-art instrumentation including a $600,000 scanning electron microscope, a $270,000 electron paramagnetic resonance instrument, and a $208,000 time-resolved luminescence spectrometer and microscope. The technology is great, the speakers agreed, but just as important will be the interdisciplinary connections made in hallway and lab conversations. Punctuated, of course, by Tootsie Rolls.

M.R.Y.

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Photos (left to right): Under the skywalk that connects the east and west wings of the Gordon Center, President Don M. Randel welcomes guests; Melvin and Ellen Gordon gave a $25 million naming gift; after tours and lectures, guests dined in the Gordon Center's Kersten Family Atrium, named in recognition of a major gift from Priscilla and Steven (JD'80) Kersten.

Photos by Dan Dry.

April 26, 2006

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