GA Founder De Hoffmann Is Honored

The man credited with starting San Diego’s postwar science boom on Torrey Pines Mesa came home Monday--and a $25,000 lifetime achievement award was awaiting him.

Frail and weakened by illness, Frederic de Hoffmann accepted the award from the company he founded, General Atomics, as about 40 of his former colleagues and others from the Torrey Pines scientific community looked on.

De Hoffmann, 64, retired from his position as president of the Salk Institute in November because he had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. Before joining Salk in 1970, he had presided over General Atomics since its founding in 1955.

De Hoffmann’s decision three decades ago to pick San Diego as the site for General Atomics not only brought the city a 1,500-person employer but also provided the catalyst for a research and academic boom in the La Jolla area, speakers at Monday’s presentation agreed.

Later additions to the network, which continues to expand, included the Salk Institute, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, various high-technology firms and UC San Diego.

De Hoffmann’s award acknowledged the commonality between UCSD and General Atomics. Funded by the company, the General Atomics-UCSD Scientific Achievement Award includes a grant to establish a scholarship in De Hoffmann’s name at UCSD.

De Hoffmann chose to give the $10,000 scholarship to the UCSD Center for Energy and Combustion Research. He will also personally receive $15,000.

General Atomics will give the award annually to “an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of science and technology, to the growth of high-technology business, and/or to the formulation and implementation of U. S. national scientific policy,” the company says. This was the first year the award was presented.