Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award
Edwin Astwood
John Enders
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Edwin Astwood
For basic contributions to our knowledge of endocrine function, leading to the control of hyperthyroidism.
Few are so gifted and so fortunate as to discover, by brilliant personal experimentation, a wholly new area in the conquest of disease. Even more rarely does such a practical advance disclose, unpredictably, a segment of basic knowledge so unique, and so versatile, as to crate in turn investigative tools of potentially greater usefulness in a wholly different field.
The original production of goiter in animals by sulfonamides by Astwood and others was, at the time, only one of many isolated and wholly unintelligible observations. The patient, exhaustive use of this phenomenon as a reproducible experiment permitting the quantitative measure of the inhibition of thyroxin production by a long series of related compounds stands as a classic model of effective study. It yielded a revolutionary advance in a practical therapeutic procedure for the control of hyperthyroidism in man.
The extraordinary specificity of the effect exerted, the nature of the compounds exerting it, and new developments in other fields of biochemistry now give support to a new concept. They indicate a specific heterogeneity of nucleic acid anabolism, characteristic of special cell types. Such a principle, when thoroughly understood, may lead to other advances presently only dimly seen as possible.
John Enders
For his achievements in the cultivation of the viruses of poliomyelitis, mumps and measles.
Patient, tireless research in the fundamentals of a science is often overlooked in favor of that which yields more immediate and tangible returns. Yet without the contribution of those workers who devote their lives to basic research, there can be little scientific progress.
For long years John Enders has quietly labored in the bacteriologic laboratory, probing into the unknowns of immunology, actively seeking insight and meaning, his mind constantly alert to the possibility of new generalizations and new relationships. His investigation of immune responses to virus infection led logically to the use of tissue cultures as a means of studying the interaction of virus and cell. Patient pursuit of this line of research carried John Enders through fundamental observations of the mumps virus to studies which culminated in the growth of the poliomyelitis virus on tissue cultures.
These basic observations in the laboratory have constituted a memorable landmark and turning point in the history of poliomyelitis research by opening new vistas and providing new and much needed tools for research. Application of John Enders's findings has led to a radical change in the concept of the pathogenesis of poliomyelitis. His studies have laid a foundation from which others have been able to develop practical laboratory diagnostic procedures. New methods of epidemiologic research have been provided, and studies which may well lead to effective vaccines have been made possible. All of these important contributions in poliomyelitis research are the direct outgrowth of the fundamental research and studies of John Enders and of those who, laboring with him, caught the scientific zeal and enthusiasm that come from association with a true scholar.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
For his distinguished research achievements in the field of cardiovascular diseases, including the discovery of actomyosin, the essential contractible element of muscle.