John Rockefeller Prentice John Rockefeller Prentice John Rockefeller Prentice (December 17, 1902 – June 13, 1972) was born to Chicago lawyer Ezra Parmalee Prentice and Alta Rockefeller Prentice in New York. Prentice's maternal grandfather is the Standard Oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937). While attending Yale University, Prentice became a member of the Skull and Bones society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated in 1928. During his years at Yale, Prentice had accumulated debts and consequently was cut off from his parents. He worked in Boston for a wholesale hardware firm for four years to make enough money to return
Rockefeller University Rockefeller Hospital's first director Rufus Cole retired in 1937 and was succeeded by Thomas Milton Rivers. As director of The Rockefeller Institute's virology laboratory, he established virology as an independent field apart from bacteriology. Notable figures to emerge from the institution include Alexis Carrel, Peyton Rous, Hideyo Noguchi, Thomas Milton Rivers, Richard Shope, Thomas Francis Jr, Oswald T. Avery, Rebecca Lancefield, Wendell Meredith Stanley, René Dubos, Ashton Carter, and Cornelius P. Rhoads. Others attained eminence before being drawn to the university. Joshua Lederberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958, served as president of the university