Mortimer Sackler

Early life Mortimer Sackler was the second son of Jewish immigrants Isaac Sackler, born in what is now Ukraine, and Sophie Greenberg from Poland. His father was a grocer in Brooklyn, where Sackler attended Erasmus Hall High School.

Education Sackler attended the Anderson College of Medicine of Glasgow University between 1937 and 1939. Although he was born in New York, he said that he was not accepted by a New York medical school because they had quotas on the number of Jewish students they would accept at that time.

Early career During the Korean War, Sackler was an army psychiatrist in Denver, Colorado, before joining his brothers, Arthur and Raymond, both newly graduated medical doctors, at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital in New York City. The three "became a moving force in the research and clinical outpatient department at Creedmore, which would become the Creedmore Institute for Psychobiologic Studies". According to The Independent, during the 1950s the brothers "undertook pioneering research into how alterations in bodily function can affect mental illness. This work contributed to a move away from treatments such as electroshock therapy and lobotomy towards pharmaceutical treatment."

Pharmaceuticals In 1952, Mortimer and Raymond became the co-chairmen of a small Greenwich Village-based pharmaceutical company that Arthur had financed. By 2001, eighty percent of Purdue Pharma's revenue came from the sale of OxyContin worth $3 billion. Mortimer served as co-chairman of Purdue Pharma Inc from 1952 until 2007. the new forecourt at the Victoria & Albert Museum, a Sackler Crossing – a walkway over the lakebridge at Kew Gardens, the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery, the Royal Opera House and behind research centers at several UK universities." He donated to the Royal College of Art, the Louvre and Berlin's Jewish Museum, Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory at the Natural History Museum, London. Jointly with his brothers he endowed the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University. jointly with his third wife, Dame Theresa Elizabeth Sackler. The foundation's donations include the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex and a contribution to the Imaging Centre of Excellence at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, containing Scotland's first 7 tesla MRI.

On December 9, 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, along with the Sackler family, announced the removal of the Sackler family name from seven named galleries, including the wing that houses the iconic Temple of Dendur.

Honors In 1995, Sackler was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his services to education.

The 'Mortimer Sackler' rose was named in his honor by his wife, Theresa, after she won the naming rights in a charity auction.

Personal life Sackler married three times. His first wife was Glasgow-born Muriel Lazarus (1917–2009); the couple had three children before divorcing, Ilene Sackler Lefcourt (b. 1948 m. Gerald B. Lefcourt), Kathe A. Sackler, (married to Susan Shack Sackler), and Robert Mortimer Sackler (predeceased). His second wife was Gertraud "Geri" Wimmer; Theresa was a member of the board of directors of Purdue Pharma. and in their residences in the Swiss Alps, and the French Riviera.

Involvement in the opioid crisis On October 30, 2017, The New Yorker published a multi-page exposé on Mortimer Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and the entire Sackler family. The article links Raymond and Arthur Sackler's business acumen with the rise of direct pharmaceutical marketing and eventually to the rise of addiction to OxyContin in the United States. The article implies that Sackler bears some moral responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the United States.