Herbert Hauptman leading Buffalo region to new heights
BRIAN ACKLEY Political Columnist
Buffalo threw a bang-up birthday party recently for one of its own. More people needed to notice.

Four score and 10 years ago, Herbert Hauptman was born. Don't fret if the name doesn't ring an immediate bell, even though his decision more than three decades ago to call Buffalo-Niagara home might just be the singular most important decision any individual has made in the last 37 years.

In 1970, the U.S. Navy essentially kicked the Nobel laureate winner off its research dock, leading the way for the New York City native, and despite the protestations of his wife, to be lured to Buffalo.

If Roswell Park and Buffalo General served as the senior seeds for the now-flourishing Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Hauptman was the sunshine, rain water and fertilizer all rolled into one. If you're looking for a true touchstone to the future, please believe it isn't Bass Pro, or the Peace Bridge or a downtown football stadium.

Like Buffalo itself, the theories for which ultimately he was internationally recognized - mathematical formulas used to help identify the molecular structures of chemical compounds - lay dormant for decades. First put forward in 1949, his work didn't manifest itself with the Nobel Prize until 1985.

His Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute - which moved into a brand new bells-and-whistles $24 million headquarters last year - stands as a jewel in the midst of the BNMC, a lightening rod for equal parts vision and dollars in a city desperate for both.

He is pledging, and sticking to the promise, to bring at least four new scientists to the institute every year. They, in turn, bring along a support staff of eight or 10 people each, workers whose job description and pay don't exactly involve asking if you'd like to supersize that petri dish.

Local leaders could take a cue from his management style as well. He hires his scientific researchers not to simply praise, puff up or otherwise preen his pedigree; he allows them free rein to choose exactly what research it is they would individually like to pursue.

Heard of Cleveland Biolabs? Not to worry, they're more anonymous than Hauptman himself. In short, it's a company spun off from the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, which has decided to move much of its research operation to the BNMC. It was enough of a significant decision that it caught the attention of editorial writers at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The newspaper

didn't exactly step forward with outright chagrin that its much maligned

eastern shore marching partner managed a major coup in convincing Cleveland Biolabs to relocate its potential life-changing research in downtown Buffalo - in fact, they'll occupy Hauptman-Woodward's old High Street digs - but its justification of the move came close.

Large publications like that don't often take the time or make the effort to specifically point out when 20 or so jobs leave a region, but most aren't at the level of this one. The company is developing practical treatments for those who may be exposed to radiation, and despite its affiliation with the Cleveland Clinic, it still decided the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus provided a better and more supportive setting in which to work.

A second research entity, PersonaDX, also announced recently that it, too, will locate in the BNMC. It is developing a genetic test that will indicate to early-stage cancer patients if they are likely to develop aggressive tumors that require chemo and radiation therapy. In two years, it may employ as many as 200 workers.

At age 90, Hauptman is still robustly involved in his research. And besides, how much do you love a guy who, despite the micro-complexities of molecular research, labels one of his main mathematical initiatives Shake 'N Bake.

If politicians really want to help in the recovery of Buffalo Niagara, they will insure the BNMC that pipelines of state and federal money - many of which have been in recent years diverted to Iraq - flow as freely as the oil we're trying to protect halfway across the globe.

There are no Walls of Fame for guys such as Herbert Aaron Hauptman. There should be. Short of that, maybe we should all see if we can finagle an invitation for celebration No. 91.

(Opinions are those of the author.)