by Josh Forman, Head of Science, Education & Outreach
There are lives that don’t just pass through history; they shape it.
Mathilde Krim’s story is one of those lives. She was a scientist, a humanitarian, and an activist who stood with the LGBTQ+ community at a time when most of the world chose silence. Her legacy is not just in labs and research papers. It’s in the way she responded to fear with courage, and prejudice with compassion.
Born Mathilde Galland in 1926 in Como, Italy, she grew up in Geneva and pursued biology despite her parents’ objections. She became the first woman to earn a PhD from the University of Geneva. But the person she became was shaped less by classrooms than by conscience. During World War II, she watched footage of Nazi death camps that left her deeply shaken. While others struggled to believe the full horror, she felt a profound empathy and a sense that indifference was itself a form of complicity.
In the early 1940s, she became involved with Jewish peers and the Zionist movement, eventually converting to Judaism before marrying medical student David Danon. Her commitment to Judaism was not symbolic but rooted in identification with a community shaped by resilience and survival. After the birth of her daughter Daphne in 1953, she moved to Israel and joined the Weizmann Institute of Science, helping pioneer research that laid the groundwork for amniocentesis. Even after her first marriage ended, she continued her work as a single mother, supported in part by Weizmann’s on-site childcare, and thrived in a demanding research environment few women could access.
In 1957, she met Arthur B. Krim, a US lawyer and film executive on the Weizmann board. What began as an unlikely pairing quickly became a deep partnership. After marriage. Mathilde and Daphne moved to New York with Arthur and Krim shifted her focus to cancer research at Cornell and the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Her work initially focused on virus that cause cancer, but led on to Interferon, which showed great promise a cancer treatment at the time. She eventually became Director of the Interferon laboratory and published extensively on the immune-regulating protein.
By the late 1970s, she was a scientific force, respected by colleagues, policymakers, and institutions alike. However, she was at a crossroad. Interferons had proved a dead-end in cancer treatment, and she’d moved into a professorship in Public Health at Columbia University. This was all alongside fierce advocacy and fund-raising done alongside her husband, who was president of United Artists. Through this side of her life, Mathilde developed close relationships with celebrities, presidents and other activists – particularly active in the American civil rights movement, independence for Rhodesia and South Africa and the Gay Rights movement.
Then, in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis emerged. Reports of a mysterious illness affecting gay men spread fear and stigma faster than the disease itself. Society recoiled. Many turned away. But Krim did not. For her, this was not an abstract medical puzzle but a moral emergency. She saw the panic and hatred not as ignorance, but as a failure of humanity, and she refused to let it stand.
Krim partnered with the physician Joseph Sonnabend, who treated early AIDS patients with empathy and care. Together they realized that fighting the epidemic required more than research. It required activism, compassion, and solidarity. In 1983, Krim helped found the AIDS Medical Foundation, the first private U.S. organisation devoted to AIDS research. It later evolved into amfAR, with the support of allies like Elizabeth Taylor, becoming a major force in funding research, public education, and policy advocacy.
What made Krim extraordinary wasn’t just her scientific mind. It was her ability to feel deeply and act boldly. She fought discrimination when it was socially acceptable to ignore it. She campaigned for safe sex education, needle exchange programs, anti-discrimination laws, and humane public health policies. She used her intellect, network, and voice to push back against stigma and demand dignity and justice.
Colleagues described her influence as uniquely compassionate. She spoke about sex, drug use, and homosexuality in ways that swept aside stigma and made scientific discussion human. She didn’t just advocate. She created space for empathy at a moment when fear had filled every room.
While lawmakers hesitated, Krim rallied presidents, celebrities, scientists, and activists. Her events were more than fundraisers. They were moments of visibility, clarity, and purpose. She helped move AIDS from the margins into the centre of public consciousness and scientific commitment. Krim was honoured many times over, including with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 for her “extraordinary compassion and commitment.” But her real legacy is far deeper than awards. It lies in her deep connection to people and her ability to be an ally to all who need it.
Mathilde Krim’s life reminds us that science without compassion is hollow, and activism without understanding is fractured. She built bridges between communities, between science and policy, between hearts and minds. Her story isn’t just history. It’s a blueprint for confronting fear with love.
