What Merits a Lasker Award?

Each year a few discoveries are singled out from the thousands of basic and clinical research advances for the Lasker Award. Here, the Chairman of the Lasker Awards Jury, Dr. Joseph Goldstein, explains why each of these advances merits this coveted recognition.

Dr. Goldstein's explanations do not disclose the substance of the Jury's deliberations. Rather, he tells what makes each achievement extraordinary with respect to both a standard for excellence, and revolutionary consequences for medical science knowledge and practice. Dr. Goldstein also identifies the qualities that most often characterize the personalities of these great men and women, and the attitudes that they commonly bring to their work as scientists.