Special Report
ON THE COVER
A Mighty
Heart
Inspiring native Detroiter
Dr. Larry Brilliant
helps heal the world.
Clockwise
from top left:
Larry and Girija Brilliant
on the Khyber Pass
through the Hindu Kush
Mountains, 1972
Larry Brilliant helped
eradicate polio in
India in the 1970s.
Dr. Larry Brilliant
with his family:
Jon, Iris, Dr. Girija
Brilliant and Joe.
Larry and Girija
Brilliant at the
Taj Mahal in
1973
Adam Finkel
Special to the Jewish News
T
hree of America's leading public
health advocates have roots in a
small enclave in Detroit around
Northlawn Avenue.
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University's
public health rock star, is one. His mother,
Joan Abrams Sachs, grew up in the neigh-
borhood. Dr. Nathan Wolfe, global disease
expert, is another. His
father, Chuck Wolfe of
Cincinnati, formerly head
of Detroit's Jewish Home
and Aging Services,
called that street home.
And nearby lived
Lawrence Brent Brilliant,
now 65, and listed among
the "Time 100," Time
magazine's list of the
world's most influen-
tial people. He's a globally known public
health expert, an epidemiologist who
helped wipe out smallpox in India. He's
also a noted philanthropist who headed
Google.org , the company's philanthropic
arm.
His journey from Detroit across the
world is a reminder of the diverse paths
life can take.
Brilliant's great-grandfather was an
Orthodox rabbi in Belarus and his father
owned Brilliant Music at West Eight Mile
Road and Livernois in Detroit — 5,500
miles from the motherland.
A self-described "first-and-a-half-gen-
eration American," Brilliant says the name
was originally something like Brilliantov.
Lawrence would give way to Larry, who
says that one Sunday he was dismissed
from Hebrew school
because he believed
science and religion
intersected. His rabbi
disagreed. Brilliant
would describe the event
as his "first great moral
conflict."
He reasoned then that
"faith not founded in
- Larry Brilliant science is not the deep-
est faith."
"I still believe more than ever in the
coexistence between science and religion:'
he said.
Brilliant would support the NAACP at
15. He would lead his teen youth group. He
would become Brandeis AZA president.
He would meet his wife at a B'nai B'rith
Youth Organization dance. He would grad-
uate high school, first in his family on
"Faith not
founded in science
is not the deepest
faith."
Mighty Heart on page 12
August
20 2009
11