Mary Lasker

Mary Lasker
woman in business suit standing in front of painting of Washington, D.c.
Born
Mary Woodard

(1900-11-30)November 30, 1900
Watertown, Wisconsin
DiedFebruary 21, 1994(1994-02-21) (aged 93)
Greenwich, Connecticut
EducationUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison
Radcliffe College (B.A.)
University of Oxford
OccupationActivist Philanthropist Lobbyist Art dealer
Organizationlist
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse(s)
Paul Reinhardt
​
​
(m. 1926; div. 1934)​

​
​
(m. 1940; died 1952)​
Parent(s)Frank Elwin Woodard
Sara Johnson Woodard
AwardsPresidential Medal of Freedom (1969)
Four Freedoms Award (1987)
Congressional Gold Medal (1987)
Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism (1992)

Mary Woodard Lasker (November 30, 1900 – February 21, 1994) was an American health activist and philanthropist. She worked to promote and raise funds for medical research. She reorganized the American Cancer Society and founded the Lasker Foundation together with her husband Albert Lasker.

Early life

Mary Woodard Lasker was born Mary Woodard on November 30, 1900, in Watertown, Wisconsin, the daughter of Sara Johnson Woodard and Frank Elwin Woodard.[1] While Lasker was growing up, her mother, an active civic leader, instilled in Lasker the values of urban beautification.[2] Lasker attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison and graduated from Radcliffe College with a major in Art History in 1923.[1][3] She next pursued postgraduate study at Oxford before settling in New York City.[1]

Lasker worked as an art dealer at Reinhardt Galleries in New York and married the owner, art dealer Paul Reinhardt, in 1926.[1] After divorcing in 1934, she created a fabric company named Hollywood Patterns.[1]

Health advocate

In 1938 she became the secretary of the Birth Control Federation of America, the precursor of the Planned Parenthood Federation.[4]

She met her second husband, Lord and Thomas advertising owner Albert Lasker, in 1939, and married him on June 22, 1940; they remained married until his death by colon cancer in the early 1950s.[1][5][6]

The Laskers supported the national health insurance proposal under President Harry S. Truman.[7] After its failure, Mary Lasker saw research funding as the best way to promote public health.[1]

With her husband, she created the Lasker Foundation in 1942 to promote medical research.[8] The Lasker Award is considered the most prestigious American award in medical research.[9] As of 2015, eighty-seven Lasker laureates have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.[10]

Together, they were the first to apply the power of modern advertising and promotion to fighting cancer. They joined the American Society for the Control of Cancer which at the time was sleepy and ineffectual and transformed it into the American Cancer Society. The Laskers ousted the board of directors. Afterwards, they raised then-record amounts of money and directed much of it to research. Lasker played major roles in promoting and expanding the National Institutes of Health, helping its budget expand by a factor of 2000 times from $2.4 million in 1945 to $5.5 billion in 1985.[11]

Ironically, her husband's ad agency had promoted smoking with the slogan, "L.S.M.F.T.—Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco"[5][12] back when the dangers of smoking were not well known. Indeed, Albert's special charge at his firm had been to get more women to smoke, as they lagged far behind men as smokers.[13][14] The American Cancer Society fought lung cancer through prevention via anti-smoking campaigns. Using TV equal-time provisions, they were able to counter cigarette advertising with their own message.[15] In 1970, Congress passed a law banning the advertising of cigarettes on television, so the anti-smoking commercials likewise went off the air.[16] Lasker was instrumental in getting the US government to fund the war on cancer in 1971.[17]

Lasker was also prominent in lobbying Eleanor Roosevelt to endorse Lyndon B. Johnson's efforts to become the 1960 Democratic nominee.[18] Lady Bird Johnson wrote about Lasker numerous times in her book A White House Diary, calling her house "charming ... like a setting for jewels" and thanking her for gifts of daffodil bulbs for parkways along the Potomac River and for thousands of azalea bushes, flowering dogwood and other plants to put along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Lasker died on February 21, 1994.[1] On her death, she left more than $10 million to the Lasker Foundation.[1]

Braniff Airways board member

On September 15, 1971, Mrs. Lasker was elected to the Board of Directors of Braniff Airways, Incorporated. She became only the second female board member of Braniff following Braniff cofounder Thomas Elmer Braniff's wife, Bess Clark Braniff, who was elected to the board after the untimely death of her husband in January 1954. Mary Lasker's appointment to the Braniff board was rare and she joined a very small group of women who were directors at large American corporations.[19]

Awards and recognition

Lasker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, the Four Freedoms Award in 1987, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1987.[20] The Alfred Lasker Award for Public Service was renamed the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service in her honour in 2000. On May 14, 2009, the United States Postal Service honored Lasker with the issuance of a stamp of face value 78 cents.[21] The stamp was released, in part, as recognition of a renewed US government commitment to funding of biomedical research. A release ceremony was held in Lasker's hometown on May 15, 2009.[2]

Organizations

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Mary Lasker: Biographical Overview". National Library of Medicine. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  2. ^ a b "Mary Woodard Lasker". History of Watertown, Wisconsin. Watertown Historical Society. Archived from the original on May 19, 2015.
  3. ^ "Wisconsin woman to appear on stamp". Associated Press. February 28, 2009.
  4. ^ "The Mary Lasker Papers: Biographical Information". National Institutes of Health. Archived from the original on June 7, 2007.
  5. ^ a b Hunt, Neen (December 13, 2007). "Mary Woodard Lasker: First Lady of Medical Research". Archived from the original on August 9, 2011.
  6. ^ "The Most Interesting Adman in the World: The Story of Albert Lasker". Under the Influence. CBC Radio. Retrieved November 27, 2019.
  7. ^ "The Mary Lasker Papers". Archived from the original on April 15, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  8. ^ Pace, Eric (February 23, 1994). "Mary W. Lasker, Philanthropist For Medical Research, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
  9. ^ "Grantees Win Lasker Award" (PDF). NIHAA Update. Vol. 14, no. 1. 2002. p. 24. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 25, 2013.
  10. ^ "The Lasker Awards Overview". Lasker Foundation. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
  11. ^ Joel L. Fleishman, et al. Casebook for the Foundation: A Great American Secret (2007) Page 50
  12. ^ LSMFT Lucky's Ad.
  13. ^ Gourley, Catherine (2008). Flappers and the New American Woman: Perceptions of Women from 1918 Through the 1920s. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Twenty-First Century Books. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8225-6060-9.
  14. ^ Hill, Daniel Delis (2002). Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. pp. 223–224. ISBN 978-0-8142-0890-8.
  15. ^ William Talman Anti-Smoking Ad 1968. Archived from the original on December 19, 2021.
  16. ^ "Cigarette ads banned on TV and radio, April 1, 1970". Politico. April 2019.
  17. ^ Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010). The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-0795-9. OCLC 464593321.
  18. ^ "Mary Woodard Lasker (1901-1994)". Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and the Election of 1960: A Project of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  19. ^ Pat, Zahrt (September 1971). "Mrs. Albert D. Lasker Director Elected September 15, 1971". B-Liner Employee Newsletter. 22 (8): 3.
  20. ^ "What's New: Mary Lasker Collection Added to Profiles in Science". United States National Library of Medicine. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011.
  21. ^ United States Postal Service. "Mary Lasker". Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Woodard_Reinhardt_Lasker