Cranston native Tanzi on Time’s list of ‘100 Most Influential People’

Daniel Kittredge
Posted 4/22/15

A Cranston native and renowned Alzheimer’s disease researcher has been named Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a 1976 graduate of Cranston High …

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Cranston native Tanzi on Time’s list of ‘100 Most Influential People’

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A Cranston native and renowned Alzheimer’s disease researcher has been named Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a 1976 graduate of Cranston High School East, is director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He will deliver the commencement address at the University of Rhode Island on May 17.

Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family and former television newswoman and first lady of California, authored the magazine’s essay on Tanzi. Her father, Peace Corps founder and one-time vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver, died of Alzeimer’s disease in 2011.

“I’m a child of Alzheimer’s, and I know firsthand how scary it is to watch the mind of someone you love get slowly erased,” she writes. “I also know that despite the fact that we’re in the middle of an epidemic, we simply don’t yet have the drive – or the drugs – to put an end to Alzheimer’s. But that doesn’t mean there’s no hope. Tanzi stands out as one of the few scientists who has committed his career to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, and last year he brought us one step closer. In a truly remarkable feat, Tanzi created what’s been nicknamed ‘Alzheimer’s in a dish’ – human brain cells that, in a petri dish, develop the markers of this terrible disease. This makes it possible for scientists to better study which of the countless drugs out there might actually slow or wipe out this mind-blowing disease.”

Tanzi, 56, is the son of Ann Tanzi and her late husband, Rudolph Tanzi. He has received numerous honors and awards for his work as a researcher.

A graduate of Cranston High School East and member of the Cranston Hall of Fame, he is married to fellow Alzeimer’s researcher Dora Kovacs, with whom he has a six-year-old daughter, Lyla.

“My interest in science and biology were first sparked by my science teachers at Gladstone Elementary and then, especially, at Cranston East, where the science program was among the best in the state,” Tanzi told the Herald last year. “From biology to chemistry to physics, I still remember the little tricks my teachers at Cranston East taught me to remember formulas and the like.”

Now a resident of Massachusetts, Tanzi told the Herald he believes his upbringing in Cranston has played a key role in his success.

“I think Cranston taught me to diversify and branch out to embrace versatility and try to excel at more than one thing on life,” he said. “Maybe it’s something in the water.”

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