2005 NETWORKING® MAGAZINE’S DAVID AWARD HONOREE.

MELVIN DUBIN

Chairman of the Board, Slant/Fin Corporation

BY MAUREEN TRAXLER

Electrical engineer, veteran, entrepreneur, businessman,
philanthropist – Mel Dubin’s life is
marked by ingenuity and compassion. Born
and raised in Brooklyn and Manhattan,
Dubin attended Townsend Harris High School, a
preparatory school associated with City University of
New York, and Brooklyn College before entering the
U.S. Army in 1943. After basic training in Texas, he
was sent to New York University for electrical engineering
classes, and was then assigned to the military
staff at Los Alamos, New Mexico, as a technician on
the Manhattan Project. After his discharge, he
returned to NYU on the GI bill and earned his bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering.

Following college, he traveled to Pittsfield (MA)
and worked in his uncle’s plumbing and heating supply
business. He had hopes of landing a General
Electric job, but then considered starting out on his
own.

Humbly, he says he thought of a business “I had
no business going into!” Baseboard heating. The heating
method was in its infancy with about seven or
eight companies in the market, including giants like
American Standard and Crane Company. With only
$2,000 in his pocket, he partnered with a tool and die
maker, and they began to craft a better heater.
Looking back, Dubin says, “One advantage was our

ignorance of all the reasons we might fail.” The pair
designed the V-shaped fin and in 1949 founded
American Slant/Fin Radiation Corporation, delivering
“ an improved product with some personality, the V-
shaped fin,” adds Dubin.

Today, Slant/Fin Corporation of Greenvale, Long
Island, is the country’s leading manufacturer of baseboard
heating equipment, is a major producer of boilers
and portable germ-free humidifiers, and has 500
employees in factories in the U.S. and Canada.

Always interested in technology, Dubin and some
fellow Jewish engineers began supporting Technion,
Israel's oldest and premier institute of science and
technology, co-founded by Albert Einstein in 1924.
Technion has demonstrated outstanding contributions
to science and technology, most notably the recent
honors conferred on professors Avram Hershko and
Aaron Ciechanover, who are recipients of the 2004
Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Through the American Technion Society (ATS), a
national organization founded in 1940 and based in
New York City, Dubin has offered financial support. A
member of the board of governors of Technion, Dubin
has also served as chairman of the ATS metropolitan
region.

Some 20 years ago, a group of Technion supporters
who wished to go beyond fundraising gathered at

Dubin’s Slant/Fin offices and decided to sponsor a
research project. Their first grant of $300,000 was
applied to research on an anti-inflammatory compound
for rheumatoid arthritis.

The group formed Redox Pharmaceutical
Corporation, an American-Israeli company, of which
Dubin in chairman. To date, Redox has attracted some
250 shareholders who have raised $17 million for drug
development. As research continued on the newly created
compounds, it was learned that they had exceptional
anti-viral properties. Redox compounds demonstrate
efficacy against the herpes viruses, the adenovirus,
the papilloma virus and HIV, the AIDS virus.
The initial product is now in FDA Phase II efficacy
tests for ophthalmic application.

Although original research began in Israel, the company
is now located at the Columbia University biomedical
incubator facility, under the direction of Dr.
David Gershon, the former head of the Technion biology
department. “It’s amazing that we’ve actually been
able to come this far,” comments Dubin, adding that
shareholders include a former chairman of Long
Island Jewish Hospital, as well as three Holocaust survivors,
three rabbis and investors around the world.

One of Dubin’s earliest philanthropic endeavors
included membership in UJA-Federation, where he
was chairman for his industry and the Great Neck
community. He has served as co-chairman of the Metal
Trades Division of Anti-Defamation League, and he is
currently a trustee of the Gurwin Jewish Geriatric
Center and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health
System.

His interest in international health and goodwill led
to various involvements, including his service as chairman
of American Friends of the Israel Museum of
Science and Technology, a member of the board of
sponsors of Holocaust Publications and a founder of
Israel Hospital Fund. He is an officer of the Center for
War/Peace Studies, founded following World War II
and seeking to abolish war. The center offered a publication
for United Nations and World Federation members,
as well as others who sought to develop a program
for lasting peace.

An old friend of Mr. Dubin, retired university
administrator David Salten says, ”For many years I
have observed with increasing admiration Mel
Dubin’s philanthropic activities - their emphasis on
verifiable results - results that create growth in human
dignity and performance. Mel has taken to heart the
principles of truly responsible giving enunciated a
thousand years ago by the great Jewish sage,
Maimonides.”

Part of Dubin’s philanthropy takes form in providing
space in his office for nonprofit and altruistic
organizations whose mission is to pursue worthy
endeavors for society. Most recently, he has provided
space to the Lymphatic Research Foundation, which
seeks to raise funds for research against lymphatic disease.
Asked about the mix of corporate and nonprofit
in the same building, Dubin simply states, “It’s the
logical thing to do; there’s no distraction from the corporate
effort, and you might wind up earning a mitzvah”
(good deed).

Dubin says he was influenced by his truly great
teachers at Townsend Harris, by exceptional people at
UJA and by his missions to Israel. “I’ve met outstanding
people at North Shore-LIJ, too, who devote themselves
to creating one of the best hospital systems in
the country.”

Dubin and his wife Eleanor live in Great Neck.
Their son Adam, an NYU graduate and film and video
writer-producer, is president of Slant/Fin Corporation.

NETWORKING® January 2005