Mandelbaum’s parents, Joseph, who died in 2013 at age 90, and Lena, 88, spent five years in a camp for the displaced in Germany after Word War II before they came to the U.S. in 1950. All four of his grandparents, and four uncles, had died in the Holocaust. Syd grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves from 1969 to 1975 and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1972 with a geology degree, followed three years later by a master’s in general science. In 1982 he added an MBA from Hofstra University.
He taught earth science in Canarsie, Lincoln and Oceanside high schools from 1972 to 1976 before going to work in the corporate world for Baxter Trevenol, a health care company. After six years he joined Johnson and Johnson Ortho Diagnostics Systems, where, from 1983 to 1989, he sold and serviced lasers used for DNA and cell analysis.
His contributions to the scientific world have ranged from setting up laser flow cytometry for HIV and oncology T-cell analysis, to inventing computer micro measurements to increase the success rate for women using in vitro fertilization, to creating measurement algorithms to calculate home run distances in baseball. In 1994 he headed an American team that performed a DNA genetic sequencing of Anna Anderson’s hair that disproved her claim that she was the daughter of the last Russian Czar. (Mandelbaum permanently loaned his papers from that investigation to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Dolan DNA Learning Center.)
He was invited to be the keynote speaker at a Long Island Cares event in 1988 by Sandy Chapin, the widow of the late singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. Through her he met rock concert promoter Ron Delsner backstage at the Jones Beach Theater three years later. “I saw all this food left over, and thought the soup kitchens could use it,” said Mandelbaum, a 33-year member of Five Towns Kiwanis, who had collected food for such organizations as the Hempstead-based Interfaith Nutrition Network.