Mathilde Krim

Medical research career, activism and philanthropy From 1953 to 1959, she pursued research in cytogenetics and cancer-causing viruses at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where she was a member of the team that first developed a method for the prenatal determination of sex.

After her marriage to Arthur Krim and her move to New York she joined the research staff of Cornell University Medical School. Arthur B. Krim was a New York attorney, head of United Artists, later founder of Orion Pictures, active member of the Democratic Party, and advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. On May 19, 1962, the Krims hosted an exclusive celebrity-filled soirée at their home following the 45th birthday party for President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, including Marilyn Monroe, Maria Callas, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Durante, Diahann Carroll, Bennett Cerf, Adlai Stevenson, and John and Robert F. Kennedy. During the course of their marriage, Arthur and Mathilde Krim were very active in the American civil rights movement, the movements for independence in Rhodesia and South Africa, the gay rights movement, and in numerous other civil liberties and human rights movements. Their home in Manhattan was the first home visited by Nelson Mandela on his visit to the United States following 27 years in South African prisons for his political activities. Nelson Mandela, Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, and freedom fighter Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe, were among their personal friends.

In 1962, Krim became a research scientist at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and, from 1981 to 1985, she was the director of its interferon lab. Until 2015, she held an academic appointment as Adjunct Professor of Public Health and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She was a fluent speaker, reader, and writer of four foreign languages: German, Italian, Hebrew, and French.

Soon after the first cases of what would later be called AIDS were reported in 1981, Krim recognized that the new disease raised grave scientific and medical questions and that it might have important socio-political consequences. She dedicated herself to increasing the public's awareness of AIDS and to a better understanding of its cause, its modes of transmission, and its epidemiologic pattern.

Contributing to the fight against AIDS, she established AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983. Later, the Foundation merged with a similar organization and called the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). With Elizabeth Taylor, she founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research contributing generous amounts of her own funds, opening her home for numerous fundraising events, and lending her considerable skills to raising awareness about AIDS and raising funds for AIDS research. Even after stepping down from the AmfAR chairmanship in 2005, she continued working on behalf of AIDS awareness through AmfAR and continued to help in raising funds for AmfAR research grants, until her death. In his book, “The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America” (1997), Charles Kaiser wrote: “One scientist outside the government was more important than any other heterosexual in New York City in sounding the alarm about the growing [AIDS] crisis. Her name was Mathilde Krim.”

Awards and recognition Krim was awarded 16 doctorates honoris causa and received numerous other honors and distinctions. In August 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, in recognition of her "extraordinary compassion and commitment".

Death Krim died at her home in Kings Point, New York on January 15, 2018, at age 91. At her death she was survived by her daughter, her sister, and two grandchildren.