The Lasker Awards

The Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, "America's Nobels," are the nation's most distinguished honor for outstanding contributions to basic and clinical medical research and represent the highest recognition for distinguished scientific achievement.

Since 1962, more than half of those honored with the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award subsequently received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In each year since 1992, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to a scientist who had previously received a Lasker Award.

First presented in 1946, the Lasker Awards are administered by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. The late Mary Lasker is widely recognized for her major contribution to the growth of the National Institutes of Health and her unflagging commitment to government funding of medical research in the hope of curing devastating diseases. Her support for medical research spanned five decades, during which she was the nation's foremost citizen-activist on behalf of medical science. Lasker Award recipients receive an honorarium, a citation highlighting their achievements, and an inscribed statuette of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation's traditional symbol representing humanity's victory over disability, disease and death.

The awards will be presented Friday, Oct. 1, at the Pierre Hotel, New York.