Bethesda in Montgomery County, Maryland — The American Northeast (Mid-Atlantic)
The Mary Woodard Lasker Center for Health Research and Education
Mary Woodward Lasker (1900-1994), with her husband Albert, founded the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation in 1942 to deepen the national commitment to medical science, and to raise awareness of extraordinary basic and clinical research discoveries which advanced progress against life threatening diseases and painful disabilities. With a passion, political astuteness, and indefatigable energy, she advocated relentlessly and persuasively for deepening funding for the National Institutes of Health and for supporting research excellence. Her vision of a world free of suffering and premature death for people everywhere guided her missionary zeal to encourage public and private support for advancing scientific knowledge.
Mrs. Lasker influenced the creation of the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute among other Federal facilities established to deal with enemies of human health including heart disease, arthritis, mental health, neurological disease, blindness and problems in human reproduction. Her efforts to influence legislation for funding cancer research culminated in the National Cancer Act of 1971, a bill that made the conquest of cancer a national goal.
Mary Woodward Lasker's sixty-year crusade on behalf of human health extended and improved the lives of millions of people throughout the world. She received a grateful nation's highest honors for strengthening support for medical research and for laying the foundation for the National Institutes of Health to become the leading research center in the world. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. In 1984 Congress honored Mary Lasker by naming this Center for her, and in 1989 she was recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Science & Medicine • Women. A significant historical year for this entry is 1942.
Location. 39° 0.138′ N, 77° 6.536′ W. Marker is in Bethesda, Maryland, in Montgomery County. Marker is on Cloister Drive just south of Center Drive, on the right when traveling south. Marker in in front of Building 60 -- The Cloisters -- on the NIH campus. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 1 Cloister Court, Bethesda MD 20814, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Walter Johnson House (approx. 0.2 miles away); Sky Horizon (approx. ¼ mile away); Tree of Hippocrates (approx. ¼ mile away); At This Location (approx. 0.3 miles away); President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the NIH Bethesda campus on this site, October 31, 1940 (approx. 0.4 miles away); Claude Denson Pepper Building (approx. 0.4 miles away); The Paul G. Rogers Plaza (approx. 0.4 miles away); The Louis Stokes Laboratories (approx. 0.4 miles away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Bethesda.
Also see . . .
1. Mary Lasker. Biographical Information, Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine. (Submitted on April 19, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.)
2. Building 60 - The Cloisters. NIH Office of Research Facilities. (Submitted on April 19, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.)
Credits. This page was last revised on June 3, 2021. It was originally submitted on April 18, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland. This page has been viewed 696 times since then and 20 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. submitted on April 18, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland. 7, 8. submitted on April 19, 2014, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland. • Bill Pfingsten was the editor who published this page.