The hard but necessary work before the headlines.
By President J. Larry Jameson
In the 1980s, the idea of gene therapy was in its infancy. For some people, the field’s feasibility landed it somewhere between ‘moonshot’ and Star Trek. This did not discourage Penn Medicine emeritus professors Dr. Jean Bennett Hon’23 and Dr. Albert Maguire, who met and married during medical school. They decided then that they would partner at the frontier of correcting gene mutations and defects, specifically for inherited forms of blindness.
Decades of perseverance and innovation followed, including collaboration with Dr. Katherine High of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2017, their therapy for a form of blindness called Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) became the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited condition. Hundreds of people worldwide have successfully received the treatment. The trio’s work has also cleared the way for more than 140 gene therapy trials for retinal conditions that affect more than 30 million people in the US alone, with more trials underway.
Last spring, Drs. Bennett, Maguire, and High were awarded the prestigious 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences [“Gazetteer,” Jul|Aug 2026]. The Breakthrough Prize is the largest award in the sciences and recognizes transformative researchers whose discoveries improve and extend human life. Nine Penn-affiliated researchers have won the Prize so far, tying us only with Harvard. As we celebrated this achievement, I was reminded of something fundamental about what we do at Penn. Great scientists, scholars, and students must persist through years of effort. They routinely investigate old assumptions and go out on a limb to test new ideas. Long before any headlining breakthrough, they do the hard but necessary work of breaking through.
In the case of Penn’s latest Prize winners, this work has resulted in sight for people once doomed to go blind. For another Penn scholar, it means painstakingly translating an ancient story so that new generations can enjoy and examine it with fresh eyes.
Just weeks before the FDA’s historic gene therapy approval, Penn Professor Emily Wilson published a new translation of Homer’s The Odyssey [“An Odyssey for Our Time,” Mar|Apr 2018]. Among her innovative approaches was recasting the poetry in iambic pentameter, bringing the epic’s ancient oral traditions to life for modern audiences. For her work, Professor Wilson earned a MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “Genius Grant.” Her translation has continued making waves since 2017, most recently as one of several versions that helped inform the summer’s blockbuster movie event, director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey.
Readers have purchased more than a million copies of Professor Wilson’s translation this year alone. As I write this, the movie is approaching $1 billion in global sales. Fueling these numbers is an impassioned public dialogue that has engaged Homer fans of all ages and introduced the Greek classic to a new generation. All of this is powerful proof that ongoing translation and adaptation are critical to keeping humanity’s stories resonant. As Professor Wilson observed, “We need new translations because we need constantly to be reassessing: What exactly might this text be doing? Might there be ways that an earlier generation of scholarship missed certain things?”
By coincidence, I was in Greece this summer to meet with Penn alumni and attend the SNF Nostos conference in Athens, where I joined with student Fellows in Penn’s SNF Paideia Program. Paideia is an ancient Greek word meaning ‘to educate the whole person,’ and our program focuses on equipping students with tools for productive dialogue across different perspectives. In our polarized times, there may be nothing more important than preparing people to civically engage, especially in the face of disagreement.
Greece is the birthplace of democracy, a distinction stretching back some 2,500 years. Chatting with the Penn Paideia Fellows made that millennia-long tradition feel new again, and I came away deeply hopeful for the future. Here were some of our best and brightest, learning what it takes to work through differences and keep democratic society moving forward.
Every day, I have the privilege of seeing our faculty, students, staff, and alumni achieve incredible things. But their achievements do not happen overnight. Advances come from dedicated study, trial and error, experimentation and exploration, and most important, perseverance. The same is true as we position our University for continued excellence with Penn Forward. Leadership in education, research, and clinical care means testing new ideas and opportunities for scaling them up. In areas like access and affordability, lifelong learning, and AI, we are refreshing old models and experimenting with innovative methods to better serve members of our University community and society. I look forward to sharing more about our momentum in the months ahead.
Behind every headline-grabbing breakthrough, there was a lifetime dedicated to breaking through. As we embark on a new academic year, I am confident that Penn’s people will continue to demonstrate to the world how it is done.
