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Dr. Martine Rothblatt
Dec. 4th, 2019 10:31 pmDr. Martine Rothblatt spoke at the Patent and Trademark Office today. I started to write “Patent Office,” but then remembered that not only is that not strictly true, but that the Trademark Commissioner herself was one of the people who asked Dr. Rothblatt a question, and the Director of the USPTO (the man who is above both the Patent Commissioner and the Trademark Commissioner) acknowledged her, and reminded us that we are not only the Patent Office. Dr. Rothblatt is an impressive inventor, who basically invented Sirius Radio, and then studied biology, and made inventions in the field of medications and medical technology (her daughter was terminally ill with pulmonary arterial hypertension, and, more than twenty years later, is in better health), and also invented the electric helicopter.
She said that more people had come up her and thanked her for letting them listen to Howard Stern than for saving lives.
Director Iancu asked her about how she had had such stamina, and overcome adversity. She said that when she was a child and teenager, her favorite reading was biographies of inventors. They had all faced major obstacles, and been told that their inventions couldn’t work, and anyway wouldn’t make any money. Tesla had faced major skepticism about alternating current; Edison and others refused to believe that George Westinghouse could transmit power tens of miles from a river or dam to a city that could use the electric power. So she was prepared to overcome various technical, legal, and fundraising problems in order to make satellite radio a reality.
Then, when her daughter was going to die, she made great efforts to learn biology in order to cure the girl. She read papers in biology and medicine, read the references in those papers, read a high school textbook to acquire some background, and then went ahead to read college biology, and persisted until she had discovered a molecule that cured pulmonologist arterial hypertension, and also improved the delivery system.
There was more, but that should give you an impression of what an extraordinary person our guest speaker is.
She said that more people had come up her and thanked her for letting them listen to Howard Stern than for saving lives.
Director Iancu asked her about how she had had such stamina, and overcome adversity. She said that when she was a child and teenager, her favorite reading was biographies of inventors. They had all faced major obstacles, and been told that their inventions couldn’t work, and anyway wouldn’t make any money. Tesla had faced major skepticism about alternating current; Edison and others refused to believe that George Westinghouse could transmit power tens of miles from a river or dam to a city that could use the electric power. So she was prepared to overcome various technical, legal, and fundraising problems in order to make satellite radio a reality.
Then, when her daughter was going to die, she made great efforts to learn biology in order to cure the girl. She read papers in biology and medicine, read the references in those papers, read a high school textbook to acquire some background, and then went ahead to read college biology, and persisted until she had discovered a molecule that cured pulmonologist arterial hypertension, and also improved the delivery system.
There was more, but that should give you an impression of what an extraordinary person our guest speaker is.
