Lasker Award

The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is awarded by the American Lasker Foundation. The Lasker Awards recognize outstanding contributions to biomedical science and are presented in the categories of “Basic Medical Research,” “Clinical Medical Research,” “Public Service,” and “Special Achievement in Medical Science,” and are widely recognized as the highest honors bestowed upon medical scientists by an American organization. Numerous Lasker Award winners later also received the Nobel Prize.

2025

Prof. Dr. Dirk Görlich

Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen

The Lasker Foundation honours Dirk Görlich, director at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences and Steven McKnight, professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center, for “discoveries that exposed the structures and functions of protein sequences of low complexity, revealing new principles of intracellular transport, pathogenesis, and cellular organisation”, the foundation announced.

2021

Prof. Dr. Dieter Oesterhelt († 2022)

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried

The biochemist Dieter Oesterhelt is awarded for the discovery of light-sensitive proteins in the membrane of unicellular organisms and their use in the development of optogenetics.