IN A BOOST to Penn Law’s interdisciplinary program, The Benjamin & Mary Siddons Measey Foundation has contributed $1 million to help establish the William Maul Measey Chair in Law and Health Sciences. Penn Law must match the gift.

The endowment stipulates that the chairholder have expertise in areas such as malpractice reform, bioethics, bio-technology, health care regulation, health care organization or comparative health law. The gift will strengthen the Law School’s connection to the School of Medicine, which offers a joint J.D./M.B. degree program with Penn Law in Law and Bioethics.

This is the first time the Foundation has made a gift to any Law School. Previously, gifts have only gone to medical schools.

The Benjamin and Mary Siddons Measey Foundation, established by William Maul Measey in 1958 in memory of his parents, supports medical education in the Philadelphia area. As of the year 2000, it was listed among the top 50 local charitable foundations in Pennsylvania. William Maul Measey, who graduated from the Law School in 1898, was a corporate attorney in Philadelphia. He practiced law for a number of years, some of the time in partnership with former classmate Owen J. Roberts C’1895, L’1898, who later became a Justice on the United States Supreme Court and Dean of the Law School.