Leighton E. Cluff

In a collaborative effort, Leighton E. Cluff, the Geriatric Education Center at the College of Medicine and the Center for Gerontological Studies in the College of Liberal Arts endowed this fund in 2002. This fund supports undergraduate or graduate scholarly work in aging with an emphasis on the social issues of aging. In addition this fund supports student and/or faculty research in the College of Medicine.

Leighton was born in 1923, in Salt Lake City, UT. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah in 1944 and a doctoral degree from George Washington University in 1949. He retired as president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, NJ and accepted an unpaid position as health policy adviser at the University of Florida. He was also a professor in the UF Department of Medicine, where he was chairman for a decade before leaving Florida in 1976 to take a position at the RWJ Foundation, the world’s largest private health philanthropy. After 10 years as its executive vice president, Leighton served as president of the organization from 1986 to 1990. In his work related to national health care, the eradication of AIDS remained his top priority.

Leighton passed away in 2004, in Gainesville, FL.