The Dickson Prize in Medicine and the Dickson Prize in Science were both established in 1969 by Joseph Z. Dickson and Agnes Fischer Dickson.

Dickson Prize in Medicine

The Dickson Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

and recognizes US citizens who have made "significant, progressive contributions" to medicine. The award includes $50,000, a bronze medal, and the Dickson Prize Lecture.

Recipients

Source
University of Pittsburgh
* 1971 Earl W. Sutherland Jr. * 1972 Solomon A. Berson and Rosalyn S. Yalow * 1973 John H. Gibbon Jr. * 1974

Stephen W. Kuffler Stephen William Kuffler (August 24, 1913 – October 11, 1980) was a Hungarian-American neurophysiologist. He is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Neuroscience". Kuffler, alongside noted Nobel Laureates Sir John Eccles and Sir Bernard ...

* 1975 Elizabeth F. Neufeld * 1976 Frank J. Dixon * 1977

Roger Guillemin Roger Charles Louis Guillemin (; January 11, 1924 – February 21, 2024) was a French-American neuroscientist. He received the National Medal of Science in 1976, and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1977 for ...

* 1978

Paul Greengard Paul Greengard (December 11, 1925 – April 13, 2019) was an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. In 2000, Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel Prize fo ...

* 1979

Bert W. O'Malley Bert W. O'Malley is an endocrinologist from the United States. He was born in 1936 in the Garfield section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his early education at Catholic primary schools and Central Catholic High School, before pursuing ...

* 1980

David H. Hubel David Hunter Hubel (February 27, 1926 – September 22, 2013) was an American Canadian neurophysiologist noted for his studies of the structure and function of the visual cortex. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Pr ...

and

Torsten N. Wiesel Torsten Nils Wiesel (born 3 June 1924) is a Swedish neurophysiologist. With David H. Hubel, he received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was s ...

* 1981

Philip Leder Philip Leder (November 19, 1934 – February 2, 2020) was an American geneticist. Early life and education Leder was born in Washington, D.C., and studied at Harvard University, graduating in 1956. In 1960, he graduated from Harvard Medical Sch ...

* 1982 Francis H. Ruddle * 1983 Eric R. Kandel * 1984

Solomon H. Snyder Solomon Halbert Snyder (born December 26, 1938) is an American neuroscientist who has made wide-ranging contributions to neuropharmacology and neurochemistry. He studied at Georgetown University, and has conducted the majority of his research a ...

* 1985

Robert C. Gallo Robert Charles Gallo (; born March 23, 1937) is an American biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in establishing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for acquired immune deficiency syndrome ( ...

* 1986 J. Michael Bishop * 1987 Elvin A. Kabat * 1988

Leroy E. Hood Leroy "Lee" Edward Hood (born October 10, 1938) is an American biologist who has served on the faculties at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Washington. Hood has developed ground-breaking scientific instrumen ...

* 1989 Bernard Moss * 1990 Ernst Knobil * 1991 Phillip A. Sharp * 1992 Francis Sellers Collins * 1993 Stanley B. Prusiner * 1994

Bert Vogelstein Bert Vogelstein (born 1949) is director of the Ludwig Center, Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at The Johns Hopkins Medical School and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. A pi ...

* 1995

Ronald M. Evans Ronald Mark Evans (born April 17, 1949 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Biologist, Professor and Head of the Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, and the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology at the Salk Institute f ...

* 1996

Philippa Marrack Philippa Marrack, FRS (born 28 June 1945) is an English immunologist and academic, based in the United States, best known for her research and discoveries pertaining to T cells. Marrack is the Ida and Cecil Green Professor and chair of the Dep ...

* 1997

Ed Harlow Ed Harlow (born 1952) is an American molecular biologist. Harlow received the Ph.D. degree from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London. Harlow is professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical ...

and Eric Steven Lander * 1998 Richard D. Klausner * 1999

James E. Darnell Jr. James Edwin Darnell Jr. (born September 9, 1930, Columbus, Mississippi) is an American biologist who made significant contributions to RNA processing and cytokine signaling and is author of the cell biology textbook ''Molecular Cell Biology''. I ...

* 2000

Elizabeth H. Blackburn Elizabeth Helen Blackburn (born 26 November 1948) is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the t ...

(Dickson Prize Lecture, April 13, 2000: "Telomere Capping and Cell Proliferation") * 2001 Robert G. Roeder (Dickson Prize Lecture, September 12, 2001: "Regulation of Transcription in Human Cells: Complexities and Challenges") * 2002 C. David Allis (Dickson Prize Lecture, September 18, 2002: "Translating the Histone Code: A Tale of Tails") * 2003

Susan L. Lindquist Susan Lee Lindquist, List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2015, ForMemRS (June 5, 1949 – October 27, 2016) was an American professor of biology at MIT specializing in molecular biology, particularly the protein folding problem with ...

(Dickson Prize Lecture, September 24, 2003: "Protein Conformation as a Pathway to Understanding Cellular Processes, Disease and Bio-Inspired Materials") * 2004

Elaine Fuchs Elaine V. Fuchs is an American cell biologist known for her work on the biology and molecular mechanisms of mammalian skin and skin diseases, who helped lead the modernization of dermatology. Fuchs pioneered reverse genetics approaches, whic ...

(Dickson Prize Lecture, 2004: "Skin Stem Cells and Their Lineages") * 2005 Ronald W. Davis (Dickson Prize Lecture, 2005: "New Genomic Technology for Yeast Applied to Clinical Medicine") * 2006 Roger D. Kornberg (Dickson Prize Lecture, October 5, 2006: "Chromatin and Transcription") * 2007 Carol W. Greider (Dickson Prize Lecture, October 11, 2007: "Telomerase and the Consequences of Telomere Dysfunction") * 2008 Randy W. Schekman (Dickson Prize Lecture, "Dissecting the Secretion Process: From Basic Mechanism to Human Disease") * 2009

Victor Ambros Victor R. Ambros (born December 1, 1953) is an American developmental biologist who discovered the first known microRNA (miRNA). He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He completed both his undergraduate and doct ...

(Dickson Prize Lecture, "MicroRNAs, from Model Organisms to Human Biology.") * 2010 Stephen J. Elledge * 2011 J. Craig Venter * 2012 Brian J. Druker * 2013 Huda Y. Zoghbi (Dickson Prize lecture, Thursday, October 3, 2013: "

Rett Syndrome Rett syndrome (RTT) is a genetic disorder that typically becomes apparent after 6–18 months of age and almost exclusively in girls. Symptoms include impairments in language and coordination, and repetitive movements. Those affected often h ...

and

MECP2 ''MECP2'' (methyl CpG binding protein 2) is a gene that encodes the protein MECP2. MECP2 appears to be essential for the normal function of nerve cells. The protein seems to be particularly important for mature nerve cells, where it is present in ...

Disorders: From the

Clinic A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary care needs ...

Genes In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

and

Neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

.") * 2014 Jeffrey I. Gordon * 2015

Karl Deisseroth Karl Alexander Deisseroth (born November 18, 1971) is an American scientist. He is the Chen Din Hwa, D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and Behavioural sciences, behavioral sciences at Stanford University. He is ...

* 2016

Jennifer Doudna Jennifer Anne Doudna (; born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist who has pioneered work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, wit ...

* 2017

David M. Sabatini David M. Sabatini (born January 27, 1968) is an American scientist and a former professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2002 to 2021, he was a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was also ...

* 2018

Bonnie Bassler Bonnie Lynn Bassler (born 1962) is an American molecular biologist; the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University; and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She has ...

* 2019

Ruslan Medzhitov Ruslan Medzhitov (born March 12, 1966) is a professor of immunobiology and dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on the analysis of the innate immune system, i ...

* 2020 James J. Collins * 2021

Cynthia Kenyon Cynthia Jane Kenyon (born February 21, 1954) is an American molecular biologist and biogerontologist known for her genetic dissection of aging in a widely used model organism, the roundworm ''Caenorhabditis elegans''. She is the vice president of ...

* 2022

Carolyn Bertozzi Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi (born October 10, 1966) is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term " bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with ...

* 2023 Clifford Brangwynne * 2024 Leslie B. Vosshall

Dickson Prize in Science

The Dickson Prize in Science is awarded annually by

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

and recognizes those who "have made the most progress in the scientific field in the United States for the year in question." The award is dated by the year in which it was announced, which is often the year before the lecture occurs.

Recipients

Source
Carnegie Mellon University
* 1970–71

Richard Bellman Richard Ernest Bellman (August 26, 1920 – March 19, 1984) was an American applied mathematician, who introduced dynamic programming in 1953, and made important contributions in other fields of mathematics, such as biomathematics. He foun ...

* 1971–72

George Palade George Emil Palade (; November 19, 1912 – October 7, 2008) was a Romanian-American cell biologist.Archived< ...

and Keith Roberts Porter * 1972–73 * 1973–74 Elias J. Corey * 1974–75 David H. Geiger, civil engineering * 1975–76 – ''not awarded'' * 1976–77 – ''not awarded'' * 1977–78 John H. Sinfelt * 1978–79

Seymour Benzer Seymour Benzer (October 15, 1921 – November 30, 2007) was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist. His career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he eventually rose to prominence in the ...

* 1979–80 – ''not awarded'' * 1980–81

John Werner Cahn John Werner Cahn (January 9, 1928 – March 14, 2016) was an American scientist and recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science. Born in Cologne, Weimar Germany, he was a professor in the department of metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institu ...

* 1981–82 – ''not awarded'' * 1982–83

Harden M. McConnell Harden M. McConnell (July 18, 1927 – October 8, 2014) was an American physical chemist. His many awards included the National Medal of Science and the Wolf Prize, and he was elected to the National Academy of Science." Education and career Hard ...

* 1983–84

Edward Fredkin Edward Fredkin (October 2, 1934 – June 13, 2023) was an American computer scientist, physicist and businessman who was an early pioneer of digital physics. Fredkin's primary contributions included work on reversible computing and cellular au ...

* 1985–86 Norman Davidson * 1986–87

Benjamin Widom Benjamin Widom (October 13, 1927 – January 23, 2025) was an American physical chemist. He was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. His research interests included physical chemistry and statistical mechanics. In 199 ...

* 1987–88

Mitchell Feigenbaum Mitchell Jay Feigenbaum (December 19, 1944 – June 30, 2019) was an American mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants. Early life Feigenbaum was born in Philadelphia, ...

* 1988–89 Joan A. Steitz * 1989–90 Richard E. Dickerson * 1990–91

F. Sherwood Rowland Frank Sherwood "Sherry" Rowland (June 28, 1927 – March 10, 2012) was an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research was on atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics. His bes ...

* 1991–92

David Botstein David Botstein (born September 8, 1942) is an American biologist who is the chief scientific officer of Calico. He was the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University from 2003 to 2013, where he remain ...

* 1992–93

Paul Lauterbur Paul Christian Lauterbur (May 6, 1929 – March 27, 2007) was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possi ...

* 1993–94

Vera Rubin Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (; July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studyi ...

* 1994–95

Raymond Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition te ...

* 1995–96

Leland Hartwell Leland Harrison "Lee" Hartwell (born October 30, 1939) is an American former president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse a ...

* 1996–97 * 1997–98

Walter Alvarez Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He and his father, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez, developed the theory that dinosaurs w ...

* 1998–99

Peter Shor Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American theoretical computer scientist known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the ...

, 25th recipient (Dickson Lecture, November 8, 1999, "Quantum Computing") * 1999–2000

Howard Raiffa Howard Raiffa ( ; January 24, 1924 – July 8, 2016) was an American academic who was the Frank P. Ramsey Professor (Emeritus) of Managerial Economics, a joint chair held by the Business School and Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. He ...

(Dickson Lecture, Tue. April 4, 2000: "Analytical Roots of a Decision Scientist" * 2000–01

Alexander Pines Alexander Pines (; June 22, 1945 – November 1, 2024) was an American chemist. He was the Glenn T. Seaborg Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School, University ...

(Dickson Lecture, April 11, 2001: "Some Magnetic Moments" * 2001–02

Carver Mead Carver Andress Mead (born 1 May 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), ...

(Dickson Lecture, March 19, 2002: "The Coming Revolution in Photography") * 2002–03

Robert Langer Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American biotechnologist, businessman, chemical engineer, chemist, and inventor. He is one of the nine Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was fo ...

(Dickson Lecture, February 26, 2003: "Biomaterials And How They Will Change Our Lives") * 2003–04

Marc W. Kirschner Marc Wallace Kirschner (born February 28, 1945) is an American cell biologist and biochemist and the founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. He is known for major discoveries in cell and developmental biolog ...

(Dickson Lecture, March 30, 2004: "Timing the Inner Cell Cycle") * 2004–05 George Whitesides (Dickson Lecture, March 28, 2005: "Assumptions: If common assumptions about the modern world break down, then what could science and technology make happen?") * 2005–06

David Haussler David Haussler (born 1953) is an American bioinformatician known for his work leading the team that assembled the first human genome sequence in the race to complete the Human Genome Project and subsequently for comparative genome analysis that d ...

(Dickson Lecture, March 9, 2006: "Ultraconserved elements, living fossil transposons, and rapid bursts of change: reconstructing the uneven evolutionary history of the human genome" * 2006–07

Jared Diamond Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist, historian, and author. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Genius Grant, and he has written hundreds of scientific and popular articles and books. His best known is '' Guns, G ...

(Dickson Lecture, March 26, 2007: "Collapse") * 2007–08

Jean Fréchet Jean M.J. Fréchet (born August 1944) is a French-American chemist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his work on polymers including polymer-supported chemistry, chemically amplified photore ...

* 2008–09

Richard M. Karp Richard Manning Karp (born January 3, 1935) is an American computer scientist and computational theorist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most notable for his research in the theory of algorithms, for which he received a Turing ...

* 2009–10

Saul Perlmutter Saul Perlmutter (born September 22, 1959) is an American astrophysicist who is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair, and is head of the International Superno ...

(Dickson Lecture, March 17, 2010: "Stalking Dark Energy & the Mystery of the Accelerating Universe") * 2010–11 David A. Tirrell * 2011–12

Marvin L. Cohen Marvin Lou Cohen (born March 3, 1935) is an American–Canadian theoretical physicist. He is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cohen is a leading expert in the field of condensed matter physics. He is widely known for ...

(March 8, 2012: "Einstein, Condensed Matter Physics, Nanoscience & Superconductivity") * 2012–13

François M. M. Morel François M. M. Morel (born 11 October 1944) is a French-American biogeochemist. He is known for his research on ocean acidification, mercury pollution, the only known cadmium metalloenzyme, and the interactions between trace metals and microorga ...

(March 12, 2013: "Ocean Acidification: Causes, Time Scales & Consequences") * 2013–14

(February 3, 2014: "Illuminating the Brain") * 2014–15 Joseph M. DeSimone (February 16, 2015: "Breakthroughs in Imprint Lithography and 3D Additive Fabrication") * 2015

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (; born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belie ...

(February 29, 2016 : "Science, Counterfactuals and Free Will") * 2016 Chad A. Mirkin (February 2, 2017 : "Nanotechnology: Small Things Matter") * 2017

(February 1, 2018: "CRISPR Systems: Nature's Toolkit for Genome Editing") * 2018 Emery N. Brown (January 31, 2019: "The Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain Under General Anesthesia") * 2019 Geraldine Richmond (February 11, 2020: "Surf, Sink or Swim: Understanding Environmentally Important Processes at Water Surfaces") * 2020

Lucy Shapiro Lucy Shapiro (born July 16, 1940, New York City) is an American developmental biologist. She is a professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Res ...

* 2021

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title "the Godfather of AI". Hinton is Univer ...

* 2022 Richard Aslin * 2023 Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz * 2024 Gilda A. Barabino

Notes

{{reflist, 2 Medicine awards Awards established in 1969 Carnegie Mellon University

Dickson Prize in Medicine

Recipients

Dickson Prize in Science

Recipients

Further reading

See also

Notes