2021 Bower Award for Business Leadership presented to Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D.

The Franklin Institute is honored to recognize Arthur D. Levinson for his extraordinary contributions to business leadership. He has served as long-time board chair of Apple Inc.; chief executive of an Alphabet Inc. (Google) venture, Calico Life Sciences; and CEO and board chair of Genentech, Inc. He helped create new compounds for combating neurological disease, a breakthrough therapy for breast cancer, and one of the most important technologies of the era-the iPhone. In directing his firms' researchers, technologists, and managers in common cause, Levinson has orchestrated the work of thousands with both a lightness of being and seriousness of purpose. He has built and directed enterprises that not only bring out the best and but also make them the best. Little wonder that one of his companies was repeatedly named one of America's best firms for which to work. In serving as inventor, scientist, technologist, author, manager, executive, and board chair, Levinson has expanded the very definition of polymath-a person of great and wide-ranging knowledge-to one of great and wide-ranging leadership.