84th Annual Meeting . November 12-16, 1956
American Public Health Association
1956 marks the eleventh annual presentation of Albert Lasker Awards by the American Public Health Association. The Lasker Awards are given by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation to individuals and groups for outstanding contributions in research related to diseases which are the main causes of death and disability, and for distinguished service in the field of public health administration.
The Awards were conceived not only to honor the recipients and dramatize their accomplishments, but also to arouse increased professional and public interest in medical research and public health administration and to aid in the rapid dissemination of vital new health information to the peoples of the earth.
In the ten years since their founding, the Albert Lasker Awards of the American Public Health Association have come to be regarded among the nation's primary medical honors. Nine of the winners have later received Nobel Prizes.
Thursday, November 15, 1956
8:30 P.M.
Second General Session
Renaissance Room, Ambassador Hotel
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Presiding
Ira V. Hiscock, Sc.D.
President, American Public Health Association
Address
Alan Gregg, M.D.
"The Dormant Torment"
11th Annual Presentation Albert Lasker Awards for 1956
Gaylord W. Anderson, M.D.
Chairman, Lasker Awards Committee, American Public Health Association
Special Award
Alan Gregg, M.D.
It is with particular pleasure that a special Albert Lasker Award is presented to Dr. Alan Gregg in recognition of the unique role he has played in the field of public health and of medical education and research in this country and throughout the world.
It is fortunate indeed that he was drawn early to the practice of public health and to
the administrative side of scientific endeavor with the Rockefeller Foundation. For no matter how significant his personal achievements in teaching, practice and research might have been, it is scarcely to be imagined that they could have compared with those made by thousands of others through his inspiration, encouragement and wise counsel.
No man in our time has more benignly influenced individual scientific endeavor or more importantly and wisely influenced the development of medical education and of scientific aspirations and standards than has Alan Gregg. Constantly appealed to as counselor by national leaders and scientific bodies, he has never been too busy to give invaluable and friendly advice to the stream of scientists and medical educators, young and old, who have sought his guidance. Throughout his influential life he has sought to elevate the levels of professional education in public health which he has seen alongside psychiatry as cornerstones of medicine of the future.
Raconteur and public speaker of happy wit and effective exposition, he has employed these talents not only for the delight of innumerable scientific and lay gatherings, but also to set forth guiding principles and philosophies which have had great influence on scientific thought.
Warm personal friend of innumerable individual scientists, he has truly been; also,
elder statesman to science as a whole.