The Generous Legacy of Dr. Sanford Bolton

Dr. Sanford “Sandy” Bolton, MS ’66 was a respected expert in the use of statistics to evaluate pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical drug quality, and an inventor who held multiple patents. He served on the faculty of the University of Rhode Island and St. John’s University and later co-founded the Hygrosol Pharmaceutical Corporation, which developed techniques to bring drugs to the generics market. Dr. Bolton co-authored the textbook, “Pharmaceutical Statistics,” which was first published in 1984 and then republished in multiple subsequent editions.

Dr. Bolton earned his MS in biostatistics from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in 1966. He acknowledged the mentorship of John Fertig, the first Biostatistics Chair at Columbia Mailman in the preface of his textbook. Dr. Bolton was also the first benefactor of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health’s Biostatistics Epidemiology Summer Training (BEST) Diversity Program, a summer program for undergraduate students from backgrounds underrepresented in public health research. His longstanding and fond relationship with the School led him to include Columbia Mailman in his Estate.

After he and his wife, Phyllis, an artist and educator, passed away in 2011, Columbia Mailman received their first distribution from the Estate. This generous bequest was used to create the Sanford Bolton Faculty Scholar Award, which supports distinguished assistant professors to catalyze innovative methodological research in biostatistics and to enhance translational impact, and the Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Prize, which is awarded annually to a top doctoral dissertation in biostatistics.

The Sanford Bolton Faculty Scholar Award was most recently held by Dr. Yifei Sun from July 2020–June 2022.  Dr. Sun's main methodological interest lies in biostatistical methodology and statistical learning in survival and longitudinal data analysis. The 2022 winner of the Sanford Bolton-John Fertig Prize was Yuan Chen, PhD, whose dissertation entitled, Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Precision Medicine, is methodologically innovative with extensive applications in the biomedical fields. It has led to three publications in statistical journals of high impact, including JASA.

On July 6, 2022, Dean Linda P. Fried and Dr. Kiros Berhane, the Cynthia and Robert Citron-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein Professor, were pleased to host Eric Warren Goldman, Trustee of the Bolton Family Trust, and his colleague Debbie Gasman, at the Columbia Mailman School. Dr. Sun was also in attendance, and she and Dr. Berhane provided updates on the department of biostatistics as well as their own research. The meeting concluded with a check distribution from the Estate.

The Columbia Mailman School of Public Health is grateful for the opportunity to honor Dr. Bolton’s legacy through these named awards in the department of biostatistics. His commitment to the use of biostatistics to improve the health and well-being of patients and populations truly speaks to the mission of Columbia Mailman and is a wonderful example of the societal impact that our alumni have had over the last century to protect and promote the health of everyone.