Gift Boosts Eye Center, Endows Chair

(November, 2014) Denver philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton has committed $3 million to support two major initiatives on the Anschutz Medical Campus.

Hamilton pledged $2 million to the University of Colorado Eye Center, which is building a new five-story building on the campus to expand its clinical and research programs. The gift establishes the Frederic C. Hamilton Macular Diagnostics Center Fund to help bring new diagnostic equipment and other equipment to the center.

Hamilton also gave an additional $1 million to the Frederic C. Hamilton Endowed Chair in Endocrinology Research in the School of Medicine Department of Endocrinology. The initial holder of the chair is E. Chester Ridgway, MD, professor of medicine.

Hamilton, who is known for his contributions and board service to the Denver Art Museum, has been a patient at the Eye Center.

“I chose to make my gift to the Macular Diagnostics Center, because I have macular in one eye,” Hamilton says. “It is the dry kind, untreatable, and a very serious impairment to one’s life. It is vital that a treatment be developed for the future of other persons. I am fortunately in the hands of one of the world’s experts, Dr. Naresh Mandava, and by supporting him and his efforts, I hope to make a difference to people in the future that develop this horrible disease.”

Mandava, MD, chair of ophthalmology, has spent more than 15 years researching age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss in people over age 60. Mandava has focused on new technologies in imaging, drug therapy and artificial vision. As executive director for the Eye Center, he has pioneered retina stimulation concepts that have the potential to restore sight in blind people.