Team science

Asking for US$40 million is never easy, but Theodore Brown knew his pitch would be a particularly tough sell. As vice-chancellor for research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1980s, Brown had been tasked with soliciting a major donation from wealthy chemist and entrepreneur Arnold Beckman, a graduate of the university. Beckman was hesitant, believing that the university should receive most of its support from the state. So Brown decided to devise a project like nothing he had ever seen before.