15 Facts About Mortimer Sackler

Mortimer David Sackler was an American-born psychiatrist and entrepreneur.

Mortimer Sackler co-owned Purdue Pharma with his brothers Arthur and Raymond.

Mortimer Sackler died in Gstaad, Switzerland, in March 2010 at 93.

Mortimer Sackler was the second son of Jewish immigrants Isaac Sackler, born in what is Ukraine, and Sophie Greenberg from Poland.

Mortimer Sackler's father was a grocer in Brooklyn, where Sackler attended Erasmus Hall High School.

Mortimer Sackler had two brothers; Arthur, the oldest of the three, died in 1987, and Raymond, the youngest, died in 2017.

Mortimer Sackler attended the Anderson College of Medicine of Glasgow University between 1937 and 1939.

At the time of Arthur Mortimer Sackler's death in 1987, Purdue Pharma was a small drug company.

Mortimer Sackler served as co-chairman of Purdue Pharma Inc from 1952 until 2007.

On December 9,2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, along with the Mortimer Sackler family, announced the removal of the Mortimer Sackler family name from seven named galleries, including the wing that houses the iconic Temple of Dendur.

In 1995, Mortimer Sackler was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his services to education.

The Mortimer Sackler rose was named in his honor by his wife, Theresa, after she won the naming rights in a charity auction.

Mortimer Sackler lived in London from 1974, when he renounced his American citizenship; he spent time at his other properties including his estate on the Berkshire Downs, Rooksnest, Lambourn Woodlands, Berkshire with nineteen acres of ornate gardens by designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd and in their residences in the Swiss Alps, and the French Riviera.

Mortimer Sackler died at age 93 on March 24,2010, in Gstaad, Switzerland, survived by his wife and their son and two daughters, as well as four children from his previous two marriages.

In 2019, The New York Times ran a piece confirming that Mortimer Sackler told company officials in 2008 to measure the company's performance in proportion not only to the number of drug doses it sold, but to the strength of those doses.