The Lasker Award

Mary Lasker (attended 1918 to 1920) couldn’t stand a moment in the lab. But she knew how important lab work could be. “I couldn’t cut up a frog,” she once said. “And I certainly couldn’t perform surgery. Nobody would have me in their laboratory for five minutes” But she knew the value of science, and so she and her husband, Alfred Lasker, created the Lasker Foundation to support research and they established the Lasker Award to recognize the best in medical science. This tribute sculpture honors Mary Lasker’s legacy and incorporates a Lasker Award statuette, the Presidential Medal of Freedom that she received in 1969, and the frog that she couldn’t dissect.