Jewish Recipients of the Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research

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Listed below are recipients of the Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research who were, or are, Jewish (or of half-Jewish descent, as noted). With the exception of the Nobel Prize, this award is the single most prestigious in the medical and life sciences. Approximately one-half of its recipients have subsequently been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Selman Waksman (1948)
Sir Hans Krebs (1953)
Michael Heidelberger (1953)
George Wald (1953)
Karl Meyer¹ (1956)
Theodore Puck (1958)
Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat (1958)
Jules Freund (1959)
Harry Rubin (1964)
Bernard Brodie (1967)
Marshall Nirenberg (1968)
Seymour Benzer (1971)
Sydney Brenner (1971)
Charles Yanofsky (1971)
Ludwik Gross (1974)
Sol Spiegelman (1974)
Howard Temin (1974)
Rosalyn Yalow (1976)
Sir John Vane² (1977)
Hans Kosterlitz (1978)
Solomon Snyder (1978)
Walter Gilbert (1979)
Paul Berg (1980)
Stanley N. Cohen (1980)
Harold Varmus (1982)
Eric Kandel (1983)
César Milstein (1984)
Michael Brown (1985)
Joseph Goldstein (1985)
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986)
Stanley Cohen (1986)
Philip Leder (1987)
Alfred Gilman (1989)
Stanley Prusiner (1994)
Jack Strominger (1995)
Robert Furchgott (1996)
Mark Ptashne (1997)
Aaron Ciechanover (2000)
Avram Hershko (2000)
Alexander Varshavsky (2000)
James Rothman (2002)
Randy Schekman (2002)
Pierre Chambon ³ (2004)
Ronald Evans (2004)
Ralph Steinman (2007)
Gary Ruvkun (2008)
Jeffrey Friedman (2010)
Arthur Horwich (2011)
Ronald Vale (2012)
Evelyn Witkin (2015)
Michael Hall⁴ (2017)
Michael Grunstein (2018)

NOTES
1. The biochemist Karl Meyer should not be confused with the bacteriologist/virologist Karl F. Meyer, the 1951 Lasker recipient (about whom we have no information).
2. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother, according to an interview published in Candid Science II, by István Hargittai (Imperial College Press, London, 2002, p. 562).
3. Jewish mother, née Yvonne Weill.
4. Jewish mother, Lillian Lee Elrick (née Lillian Erlich).

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