Leonard Abramson, the Philadelphia businessman whose philanthropy helped build Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and turbocharged cancer research in the region, died July 4 at the age of 93. A former pharmacist who once drove a taxi to pay for school, he turned a career in managed care into the engine for a later-life mission to fund clinical trials and research that changed how cancer is treated in and far beyond Philadelphia.
His death was reported on July 9 by CBS Philadelphia, which cited a local funeral home. Penn Medicine has said that Leonard and his late wife Madlyn were central to building the Abramson Cancer Center and that, as of 2020, the couple had given more than $140 million to support cancer research. According to the obituary notice, the family requested that memorial contributions go to the Abramson Cancer Center or to local cancer charities.
From taxi to HMO founder
Born in 1932 in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, Abramson drove a taxi to help pay for his pharmacy degree, early reporting notes. He went on to found U.S. Healthcare in 1975, helped take the company public in the early 1980s, and sold it to Aetna in 1996, a business run that created the fortune he later directed into medical research and local institutions, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
How his gifts reshaped cancer care
In 1997 Leonard and Madlyn Abramson made a $100 million founding gift to launch the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, a move that seeded recruitment and clinical trial programs that Penn Medicine highlights as foundational to its immunotherapy work. The Abramson Cancer Center, renamed in recognition of that support, now lists hundreds of faculty members and thousands of clinic and trial participants, hospital leaders say, and the family’s endowments have helped fund professorships and expanded patient services across the health system.
Funeral, memorials and local reaction
Funeral services were private, according to the Legacy obituary, and a memorial date will be announced. That notice also says the family requested donations to the Abramson Cancer Center or to Philly Fights Cancer. Campus leaders and Penn Medicine officials remembered Abramson as “a true friend” whose name “will always be synonymous with hope,” a tone echoed in messages circulated by university leaders and reported by local outlets. As the institutions that benefited from his gifts plan remembrances, officials are emphasizing the very practical ways his philanthropy reinforced patient care and the research infrastructure that underpins it.
