On May 4, 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) dedicated Building 4 in honor of Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., the former U.S. Senator and former Governor of Connecticut. In 1970, Weicker was elected to the U.S. Senate where he served for three terms, from 1971 to 1989. During his tenure, he successfully protected and defended the NIH budget and increased the appropriation for the NIH.

This is the second time a building at NIH has been dedicated to him. The first was in 1991 when Building 36 was named for him, but “that building is no more,” said NIH Director Francis Collins at the dedication ceremony held on May 5 in front of Building 4. Building 36 was torn down to make room for the Porter Neuroscience Building (Building 35).

Weicker was one of the first senators to hold hearings on AIDS and sought $46 million in funding to test the then experimental drug zidovudine. When he was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health, and Education, the NIH budget grew from $4.3 billion to $6.7 billion in five years. In 1988, Weicker received a Lasker Public Service Award for his “compassion and dedication in the fight to eradicate disease and disability through federal funding of medical research and public health programs.” In 1989, Weicker was the founding president of Research!America, the nation’s largest not-for-profit public-education and advocacy alliance working to make research to improve health a national priority.