Perlman Gifts Span Campus

Eleanor Bartsch and Taylor Skiff from the Perlman Trio

Violinist Eleanor Bartsch and cellist Taylor Skiff from the Perlman Trio rehearse for a concert. A gift from Kato Perlman funds the undergraduate trio, which also includes pianist Thomas Kasdorf and, this semester, violist Daniel Kim.

How much difference can one woman make?

  • Phenomenal undergraduate musicians play to full houses in the School of Music.
  • More than 200 scientists attend a campus symposium dedicated to antibiotic discovery and development.
  • Another door opens for graduate and professional pharmacy students.
  • A new 19th century painting will hang in the Chazen Museum of Art before the year is out.

Katherine “Kato” Perlman, PhD, a distinguished service emerita, senior scientist, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is touching lives on and off campus with her gifts.

The Perlman Piano Trio Fund provides $10,000 a year for each of the trio musicians, plus an extra $5,000 for a fourth member if needed. The David and Kato Perlman School of Pharmacy Student Scholarship and their Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Pharmacy help the School attract the brightest candidates. The Perlman Symposium on Antibiotic Discovery and Development encourages new research, and a gift to the Chazen financed the purchase of the painting.

“(The trio support) allows the very best of our students to explore their talents in a different way,” said Martha Fischer, associate professor of piano and trio advisor. The trio members have excelled beyond anyone’s expectations because of the award.

“With that gift comes a certain responsibility,” Fischer said. “(The students) feel they need to push themselves more. To set apart a special group to play chamber music together says chamber music is important and worthy of their time and energy.” The trio also has connected with the community with well-attended concerts.

In the School of Pharmacy, the Perlman scholarship for professional students helps ensure that a pharmacy education is open to all who are qualified, Dean Jeanette Roberts said. Graduate support is critical to attracting the best and brightest graduate students to Wisconsin: They will become tomorrow’s faculty, research scientists, professionals and leaders. “The School is especially pleased to be able to permanently honor David Perlman, our former dean, through a named scholarship and graduate fellowship,” she said.

Chazen Museum of Art Director Russell Panczenko recently completed the purchase of a 19th century Dutch masterpiece with a gift from Perlman. “There is no state money or university money for building the art collection,” he said. “Our entire collection is dependent on individuals.” A gift such as Perlman’s allows the art museum to acquire a piece of historic and aesthetic significance.

In choosing a work to buy with gift dollars, Panczenko said he looks for a piece that relates to the donor – “something they can be proud of.” Three days of looking through auction catalogs with Perlman helped him identify her interest in 19th century art that depicts family emotions; he spent more than a year finding the right piece to buy.

“If they’re good, (19th century pieces) don’t come up in the art market very often,” he said. “In Grandfather’s Arms” by Jozef Israels will go on display at the Chazen as soon as it is cleaned, re-varnished and delivered.

The Perlman Symposium on Antibiotic Discovery and Development especially recognizes David Perlman’s lifelong interest in antibiotic research. “My husband was always for education, education, education,” Perlman said.

David Perlman, a Madison native, earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the UW-Madison, the latter in biochemistry. A microbial biochemist, he made several discoveries linked to antibiotics and vitamin B-12 while working at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research in New Jersey. He returned to the UW-Madison in 1967, where he served as dean of the School of Pharmacy from 1968 to 1975.

Kato Perlman

Kato Perlman

Kato Perlman’s career began in her native Budapest, Hungary, where she earned her PhD in organic chemistry and worked for a pharmaceutical company and the Research Institute for Pharmaceutical Industry before moving to the United States. She emigrated because she was ready to move out of her parents’ house and live a life of her own. Her brother already lived in the United States. “I went back to Hungary twice because I chickened out,” she said. The third time, Perlman found a perfect career fit in the Princeton University Department of Chemistry.

She met David Perlman a week after arriving in Princeton, married him in 1968 and followed him to Madison. She worked in her husband’s lab isolating, identifying and synthesizing microbial products – and learned to hurry home in time to host dean’s receptions. Without her own National Institutes of Health funding, Perlman lost her job when her husband died in 1980 after a three-year battle with cancer.

“The odd thing is, from every bad thing, something good comes,” Perlman said.

Pharmacy researcher Charles Sih introduced her to vitamin D pioneer Hector DeLuca, who gave her a job, a free hand and her own lab. Fifteen years later, Perlman retired as a senior scientist, after being included on several of DeLuca’s patents. The patent income is the foundation of her philanthropy. “I could have done the same work elsewhere and nothing would have come of it,” she said.

When she wanted to establish a piano trio, Perlman turned to former Chancellor Irving Shain, who became her philanthropic advisor. Morphy Hall was packed for the first Perlman Trio concert. “And they got a standing ovation,” Perlman remembered. She decided then to provide continued, immediate funding for the group. “Why would I try to increase an endowment and wait until I am done, when I could help these kids now?”

Despite the success of her philanthropy, Perlman said she would give up her wealth to have her husband back. “I don’t have that choice,” she said. “This way, the trio, having those kids, is such satisfaction: I hope they will never go under.”