The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1945 to living persons who have made major contributions to

medical science Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practic ...

or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, which was founded by

Albert Lasker Albert Davis Lasker (May 1, 1880 – May 30, 1952) was an American businessman who played a major role in shaping modern advertising. He was raised in Galveston, Texas, where his father was the president of several banks. Moving to Chicago, he be ...

and his wife

Mary Woodard Lasker Mary Woodard Lasker (November 30, 1900February 21, 1994) was an American health activist and philanthropist. She worked to raise funds for medical research and founded the Lasker Foundation. Early life Mary Woodard was born in Watertown, Wisconsi ...

(later a medical research activist). The awards are sometimes referred to as "America's Nobels". The Lasker Awards have gained a reputation for identifying future winners of the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

. Eighty-six Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 32 in the last two decades.The Lasker Foundation – 2008 Special Achievement Award
/ref> Claire Pomeroy is the current president of the Lasker Foundation.

Award

The award is given in four branches of medical science: # Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award #

Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award is one of four annual awards presented by the Lasker Foundation. The Lasker-DeBakey award is given to honor outstanding work for the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of diseas ...

Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award The Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award, known until 2009 as the Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award, is awarded by the Lasker Foundation to honor an individual or organization whose public service has profoundly enlarged the possibilities ...

(Renamed in 2011 from Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award. Renamed in 2000 from Albert Lasker Public Service Award.) # '' Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science (1994–)''(optional) The awards carry an honorarium of $250,000 for each category. A collection of papers from the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation were donated to the National Library of Medicine by Mrs. Albert D. Lasker in April 1985. In addition to the main awards, there are historical awards that are no longer awarded.

Recent awards

Recent winners include the following:

Historical awards

Awards no longer made include Special Public Health Awards, Special Awards, Group Awards, and Lasker Awards made by the International Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, the National Committee Against Mental Illness, and Planned Parenthood - World Population. Awards were also presented for medical journalism.

Special Public Health awards

*1975 –

Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories Merck & Co., Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, and is named for Merck Group, founded in Germany in 1668, of whom it was once the American arm. The company does business as Merck Sharp ...

: Jr., James M. Sprague, John E. Baer, Frederick C. Novello *1980 – National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute *1984 – Dorothy T. Krieger, Kevin McLaughlin Jr. *1987 – Centennial Salute to the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Special awards

*1947 –

Thomas Parran Jr. Thomas Parran (September 28, 1892 – February 16, 1968) was an American physician and Public Health Service officer. He was appointed the sixth Surgeon General of the United States from 1936 to 1948, and oversaw the notorious Tuskegee syphilis e ...

*1949 – Haven Emerson *1952 –

Charles-Edward Amory Winslow Charles-Edward Amory Winslow (February 4, 1877 – January 8, 1957) was an American bacteriologist and public health expert who was, according to the ''Encyclopedia of Public Health'',"Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory.", ''Encyclopedia of Public He ...

*1956 – Alan Gregg *1959 – J. Lister Hill and John E. Fogarty

Group awards

*1946 –

; National Regional Research Laboratory of the

US Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...

; Board for the Coordination of Malarial Studies; Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine of the US Department of Agriculture;

Army Epidemiological Board An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

*1947 – British Ministry of Health and

Ministry of Food An agriculture ministry (also called an) agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister ...

; United States Committee on Joint Causes of Death *1948 –

Veterans Administration The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers a ...

's Department of Medicine and Surgery *1949 – American Academy of Pediatrics; Life Insurance Medical Research Fund *1950 – International Health Division of

The Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

*1951 –

Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York EmblemHealth is one of the United States' largest nonprofit health plans. It is headquartered at 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is a multi-billion company with over 3 million members. EmblemHealth was created in 2006 thr ...

; Alcoholics Anonymous *1953 – Division of Research Grants of the

; University Laboratory of Physical Chemistry Related to Medicine at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

*1954 – Streptococcal Disease Laboratory, Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base:

Charles H. Rammelkamp Jr. Charles Henry "Rammel" Rammelkamp Jr. (May 24, 1911 – December 5, 1981) was an American scientist and physician. Rammelkamp Jr. discovered that streptococcus can cause rheumatic fever and nephritic syndrome, for which, he received the Lasker A ...

, Director *1956 –

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

; Medical Care Program, Welfare and Retirement Fund of the

United Mine Workers of America The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unit ...

*1960 – Crippled Children's Program of the Children's Bureau; Chronic Disease Program of the California State Department of Public Health ( Lester Breslow)

International Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled

*1954 – Henry H. Kessler, Juan Farill, Viscount Nuffield *1957 – Howard A. Rusk, Fabian W. G. Langenskiold,

World Veterans Federation The World Veterans Federation (WVF) is the world's largest international veteran organisation. The federation consists of 172 veterans organizations from 121 countries representing some 60 million veterans worldwide. It is a humanitarian organis ...

*1960 – Mary E. Switzer,

Gudmund Harlem Gudmund Harlem (24 July 1917 – 22 March 1988) was a Norwegian physician and politician for the Labour Party. He was the Norwegian Minister of Social Affairs from 1955 to 1961 and Norwegian Minister of Defence from 1961 to 1965 (except for a s ...

, Paul W. Brand *1963 – Renato de Costa Bomfim, Kurt Jansson, Leonard W. Mayo *1966 – Poul Stochholm, Wiktor Dega, Eugene J. Taylor *1969 – Gustav Gringas, Mr and Mrs Raden Soeharso, Andre Trannoy,

International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...

*1972 – James F. Garrett, Kamala V. Nimbkar, Jean Regniers

National Committee Against Mental Illness

*1944 – William C. Menninger *1945 – G. Brock Chisholm, John Rawlings Rees *1946 – W. Horsley Gantt,

Jules H. Masserman Jules is the French form of the Latin "Julius" (e.g. Jules César, the French name for Julius Caesar). It is the given name of: People with the name *Jules Aarons (1921–2008), American space physicist and photographer *Jules Abadie (1876–195 ...

, Walter Lerch, Douglass Rice Sharpe, Lawrence K. Frank *1947 – Catherine MacKenzie *1948 – C. Anderson Aldrich,

Mike Gorman Michael Gorman (born November 24, 1945) is an American television play-by-play commentator for the Boston Celtics on NBC Sports Boston. Gorman also did play-by-play, alongside Fran Fraschilla, for NBC for basketball games during the 2016 Summ ...

, Al Ostrow *1949 – Mildred C. Scoville, Albert Deutsch

Planned Parenthood - World Population

*1945 – John McLeod, Felix J. Underwood *1946 –

Robert Latou Dickinson Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) was an American obstetrician and gynecologist, surgeon, maternal health educator, artist, sculptor and medical illustrator, and research scientist. Early life Robert Latou Dickinson was born on February 21, 1 ...

, Irl Cephas Riggin *1947 – Alan F. Guttmacher, Abraham Stone *1948 – John Rock, Richard N. Pierson *1949 – George M. Cooper, Carl G. Hartman *1950 – Margaret Sanger, Bessie L. Moses *1951 – Guy Irving Burch,

William Vogt William Vogt (15 May 1902 – 11 July 1968) was an American ecologist and ornithologist, with a strong interest in both the carrying capacity and population control. He was the author of best-seller ''Road to Survival'' (1948), National Direc ...

*1952 – John William Roy Norton, Herbert Thoms, Eleanor Bellows Pillsbury *1953 –

Harry Emerson Fosdick Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878 – October 5, 1969) was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominen ...

Elise Ottesen-Jensen Elise Ottesen-Jensen, also known as Ottar, (2 January 1886 − 4 September 1973) was a Norwegian- Swedish sex educator, journalist and anarchist agitator, whose main mission was to fight for women's rights to understand and control their own body ...

*1954 – Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, M. C. Chang, Howard C. Taylor *1955 – Warren O. Nelson, Robert Carter Cook *1958 – Harrison S. Brown *1959 – Julian Huxley *1960 –

Gregory Pincus Gregory Goodwin Pincus (April 9, 1903 – August 22, 1967) was an American biologist and researcher who co-invented the combined oral contraceptive pill. Early life Gregory Goodwin Pincus was born in Woodbine, New Jersey to Jewish parents, who we ...

*1961 – John D. Rockefeller, III *1964 –

Cass Canfield Augustus Cass Canfield (April 26, 1897 – March 27, 1986) was an American publishing executive who was the longtime president and chairman of Harper & Brothers, later Harper & Row. Early life Canfield was the son of Augustus Cass Canfield (185 ...

*1965 – C. Lee Buxton, Estelle T. Griswold

References

External links

The Lasker Foundation
- Official site
Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation - Albert Lasker Awards Archives (1944-)
��National Library of Medicine finding aid {{Authority control Medicine awards Awards established in 1945 1945 establishments in the United States