On Aug. 8, 1945, the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (SKI) was established. A gift of $4 million from Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., Chair of General Motors (GM) and a trustee on the board of Memorial Hospital, provided the initial funds for the construction of the institute and its early operating costs.

Engineer Charles F. Kettering – Director of Research at GM as well as inventor of the key-operated ignition switch and anti-knock gasoline – was the institute’s co-founder. He served as a member of SKI’s Committee on Scientific Policy for many years.

As conceived by its founders, SKI would be devoted solely to scientific research, and would play a pivotal role in the intellectual life of the cancer center.

“The Sloan-Kettering Institute building will stand squarely in the middle of Memorial Cancer Center,” Reginald Coombe, Memorial’s President, said in 1945. “It will occupy the dominant place that research should occupy in such a Center.”

The New York Times covered the development on its front page. The announcement, which came two days after the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, noted that like the research program that developed the atomic bomb, research efforts that were “scientifically organized” could make rapid progress — in this case in the fight against cancer.