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Dr. Gary Michelson formed the Twenty Million Minds Foundation to create and provide for the use of a comprehensive, digital, higher education textbook library in an open architecture platform to mitigate students' expenses and to eventually replace the costly textbooks currently in use.
Gary became involved in this effort a few years ago when he learned from a group of professors at Santa Ana College, a 2-year public institution in Orange County, California, that each term, several bright and qualified students failed to complete their degrees because they could not afford the increasingly expensive course textbooks. After learning that these professors had contributed their own money to buy textbooks to enable certain students to continue their education, our founder also contributed money to help purchase textbooks for students who would otherwise be unable to obtain them. But Dr. Michelson wanted to find a more enduring solution, given as graduate student, Gary worked one, and sometimes two jobs during school with determination in order to receive a college education and understood the hardships and expenses of college life. Thus emerged the Twenty Million Minds, Inc.'s ("20MM" or the "Organization") mission to increase educational access and foster academic success by reducing the obstacles associated with the high cost of academic textbooks and related materials.
Dr. Michelson was born in Philadelphia on January 14, 1949. He and his three brothers were raised by his mother and grandmother, who suffered from a crippling spinal deformity. Dr. Michelson remembers watching his grandmother laying her hand on a hot stove and burning herself because of a spinal deformity which did not allow her to feel hot or cold in her extremities. At that moment, the door opened when his grandmother told him he would be a doctor one day, and he did. At the age of seventeen, Dr. Michelson left behind his humble beginnings and set out on the arduous task of putting himself through college at Temple University and medical school at Hahnemann Medical College. Dr. Michelson completed his residency in Orthopedic surgery at Hahnemann Medical Hospital, and subsequently completed a fellowship in spinal surgery at St. Luke’s Medical Center in association with Texas Medical Center and Baylor University.
Retirement from 25 years as a practicing spinal surgeon has not diminished Dr. Michelson's unflagging passion for helping others: He founded the Found Animals Foundation, Inc. which created the Michelson Prize and Grants in Reproductive Biology which is an international competition that offers a prize of $25 million to anyone who can bring him a means of non-surgical pet sterilization. In addition, he has founded and is the sole benefactor of the Medical Research Foundation Trust, Michelson Medical Research Foundation, Inc., and the Twenty Million Minds Foundation.
Driven by his exceptional dedication, Dr. Michelson is the sole inventor of more than 250 United States patented instruments, operative procedures, and medical devices related to advances in spinal surgery or to the more general field of orthopedic surgery. He also has over 750 issued or pending patents worldwide that have advanced spinal surgery with minimally invasive procedures, devices, and surgical tools. This accomplishment has landed him on Forbes 400 and into the Inventor Hall of Fame.
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