Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award

It is a great pleasure to be here!

I wish to thank Joe for his elegant overview and Mike for your warm and personal comments about our discoveries. I was even beginning to like the guy you were talking about.

I am truly delighted to be the recipient of the 2004 Lasker Award. I want to thank the distinguished jury for this honor. The vetting process is extremely rigorous—I knew this when they asked for dental records. I am greatly honored to be included in the select group of physicians and scientists who have won this prestigious award. I wish to heartily congratulate my co-recipients, Elwood Jensen and Pierre Chambon.

At times it seemed that our work was everything, enveloping us in a surreal world of complex ideas and swirling emotion. It was like we had fallen into that magical tunnel described by Lewis Carroll depositing us at the entrance to Wonderland…an entrance that was sealed and could be unlocked only by asking the right question.

Science is about asking the right question—as I tell every one who joins my lab, "if you want a big answer you must ask a big question." I have had the good fortune to work with a remarkable cadre of people, my "comrades in science," some of whom are sitting at my table, who were not afraid ask and work on the big questions.

The idea of asking questions takes me back to the time I first met Francis Crick. It was said Francis' great gift was asking the right question. I remember at Salk when I first went to his office to discuss my work. An office first occupied by the famed Jacob Bronowski with a framed picture of Charles Darwin adorning the wall, with Francis sitting in Shakespearean mode at his desk, I began to wonder "Lord why am I here? And how can I get out?" Those were my first questions. Realizing I was nervous, Francis asked his first of many questions: "Ron, would you like some cinnamon toast? And perhaps some tea?" "Kathleen," he said, "some cinnamon toast and tea for Ron." Deceptively simple, but it settled me down and was a brilliant start to a 26-year-long relationship.

So what are the next questions? For us, we ask how our studies of transcriptional physiology can help to understand human development and control human disease. Biomedical research can only be pushed forward by the next generation and it is my hope to encourage the spirit of young people to pursue science and bring their energy and enthusiasm to help answers to these questions.

Finally, in addition to the idealistic aspects, science is a grueling and competitive discipline and I want to thank my wife, Ellen, for unflagging emotional support, advice and love. I also acknowledge my daughter, Lena—as of three weeks ago a freshman at Columbia—who spackles me with style and gives me perspective on what life is all about.

My thanks to you all for sharing this special day.

I end on the note that this week in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his theories of gravitation in the "Principles"—so all of you may be comforted by the knowledge that what stood up will now sit down.

Thank you.