The Double Helix Medal has been awarded annually since 2006 by

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is one of 68 institutions supported by the Cancer Centers ...

(CSHL) to individuals who have positively impacted human health by raising awareness and funds for biomedical research. At the inaugural dinner,

Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, a ...

received the first Double Helix Medal for his fight against

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. Other notable recipients include founders of

Autism Speaks Autism Speaks Inc. is a controversial autism advocacy organization and the largest autism research organization in the United States. It sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities aimed at families, governments, an ...

Suzanne and

Bob Wright Robert Charles Wright (born April 23, 1943) is an American lawyer, businessman, right-wing lobbyist, and author. He is a former NBC executive, having served as president and CEO from 1986 to 2001, and chairman and CEO from 2001 until he retire ...

; former

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

head

Sherry Lansing Sherry Lansing (born Sherry Lee Duhl; July 31, 1944) is an American philanthropist and retired film studio executive. She is a former CEO of Paramount Pictures and president of production at 20th Century Fox. In 1996, she became the first woman ...

who produced the

Stand Up to Cancer Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) is a charitable program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF). SU2C aims to raise significant funds for translational cancer research through online and televised efforts. Central to the program is a telethon tha ...

telethon; Evelyn Lauder who founded the

Breast Cancer Research Foundation The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) is an independent, not-for-profit organization which has raised $569.4 million to support clinical and translational research on breast cancer at medical institutions in the United States and abroad. BC ...

; Hank Greenberg of the

Starr Foundation The Starr Foundation was established in 1955 by Cornelius Vander Starr, an insurance entrepreneur who founded C.V. Starr & Co. and other companies later combined by his successor, Maurice R. Greenberg, into what became the American International ...

, which is one of the largest supporters of scientific research; Marilyn and Jim Simons, the world's largest individual supporters of

autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

research;

David H. Koch David Hamilton Koch ( ; May 3, 1940 – August 23, 2019) was an American businessman, political activist, philanthropist, and chemical engineer. In 1970, he joined the family business: Koch Industries, the second largest privately held c ...

who has donated over $300 million to biomedical research; and prominent scientists and

Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

. The Double Helix Medal is named for the iconic structure of the DNA molecule, discovered by

James D. Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...

Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical struc ...

, Maurice Wilkins, and

Rosalind Franklin Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, co ...

. The study of DNA is central to biological research, and is at the heart of work at CSHL. The annual New York City gala at which the medals are awarded was sparked by philanthropist Cathy Cyphers Soref, an Honorary Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Association.

Medal recipients

2022: * Albert Bourla, Ph.D. * Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D. 2021: *

Reggie Jackson Reginald Martinez Jackson (born May 18, 1946) is an American former professional baseball right fielder who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Kansas City / Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, and Cali ...

* Leonard S. Schleifer, M.D., Ph.D. * George D. Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D. 2020: 2019: *

Boomer Esiason Norman Julius "Boomer" Esiason (; born April 17, 1961) is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, primarily with the Cincinnati Bengals. He was selected in th ...

* Nancy Wexler, Ph.D. 2018:/ *

Priscilla Chan Priscilla Chan (born February 24, 1985) is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015, with a p ...

and

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

Larry Norton WGRF (96.9 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station in Buffalo, New York, branded as "97 Rock". The station is owned by Cumulus Media and has a radio format playing classic rock, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s. WGRF competes for classic rock list ...

, M.D. 2017: *

Tom Brokaw Thomas John Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of ''The Today Show'' from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of '' ...

* Helen & Charles Dolan 2016: *

Alan Alda Alan Alda (; born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor, screenwriter, and director. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for playing Captain Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the war co ...

P. Roy Vagelos Pindaros Roy Vagelos (born October 8, 1929, in Westfield, New Jersey), better known as P. Roy Vagelos or Roy Vagelos, is an American physician and business executive, who was president and chief executive officer (1985) and chairman (1986) of t ...

2015: *

David Botstein David Botstein (born September 8, 1942) is an American biologist serving as the chief scientific officer of Calico. He served as the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University from 2003 to 2013, where ...

Katie Couric Katherine Anne Couric ( ; born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and presenter. She is founder of Katie Couric Media, a multimedia news and production company. She also publishes a daily newsletter, ''Wake Up Call''. From 2013 to 2017, ...

Anne Wojcicki Anne E. Wojcicki ( ; born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access t ...

2014: *

Andrew Solomon Andrew Solomon (born October 30, 1963) is a writer on politics, culture and psychology, who lives in New York City and London. He has written for ''The New York Times'', ''The New Yorker'', ''Artforum'', '' Travel and Leisure'', and other publica ...

Matthew Meselson Matthew Stanley Meselson (born May 24, 1930) is a geneticist and molecular biologist currently at Harvard University, known for his demonstration, with Franklin Stahl, of semi-conservative DNA replication. After completing his Ph.D. under Linus ...

Marlo Thomas Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas (born November 21, 1937) is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist. She is best known for starring on the sitcom ''That Girl'' (1966–1971) and her children's franchise '' Free to Be... You and ...

November 4, 2013: *

Peter Neufeld Peter J. Neufeld (born July 17, 1950) is an American lawyer, cofounder, with Barry Scheck, of the Innocence Project, and a founding partner in the civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin. Starting from his earliest years as an attorney repr ...

* Robin Roberts * Barry C. Scheck November 28, 2012: *

Michael J. Fox Michael Andrew Fox (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American retired actor. Beginning his career in the 1970s, he rose to prominence portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom ''Family Ties'' (1 ...

* Arthur D. Levinson * Mary D. Lindsay November 15, 2011: *

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Kareem (alternatively spelled Karim or Kerim) ( ar, کریم) is a common given name and surname of Arabic origin that means "generous", "noble", "honorable". It is also one of the Names of God in Islam in the Quran. Given name Karim * Karim A ...

Temple Grandin Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American academic and animal behaviorist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Gra ...

Harold E. Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was a ...

November 9, 2010: *

Mary-Claire King Mary-Claire King (born February 27, 1946) is an American geneticist. She was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called ''BRCA1''. She studies human genetics and is particularly interested in g ...

Evelyn Lauder Evelyn Lauder (née Hausner; August 12, 1936 – November 12, 2011) was an Austrian American businesswoman, socialite and philanthropist who has been credited as one of the creators and popularizers of the pink ribbon as a symbol for awareness of ...

* John F. Nash, Jr. November 10, 2009: *

Herbert W. Boyer Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer (born July 10, 1936) is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, ther ...

* Stanley N. Cohen * Kathryn W. Davis *

Maurice Greenberg Maurice Raymond “Hank” Greenberg (born May 4, 1925) is an American business executive and former chairman and chief executive officer of American International Group (AIG). Early life Greenberg was born into a Jewish family in Greenwich Vil ...

November 6, 2008: *

* Marilyn and

James Simons James Harris Simons (; born 25 April 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his f ...

J. Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and businessman. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. ...

November 8, 2007: *

David Koch David Hamilton Koch ( ; May 3, 1940 – August 23, 2019) was an American businessman, political activist, philanthropist, and chemical engineer. In 1970, he joined the family business: Koch Industries, the second largest privately held c ...

Michael Wigler Michael Howard Wigler (born September 3, 1947, in New York) is an American molecular biologist who has directed a laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1978 and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for de ...

Richard Axel Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won hi ...

November 9, 2006: *

* Suzanne Wright *

Phillip Sharp Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryo ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Double Helix Medal home

Double Helix Medal history

2010 Double Helix Medal dinner
at

New York Social Diary New York Social Diary is a website that publishes photographs of "the rich and powerful" socialites and a social calendar of events that they might attend. It is maintained by David Patrick Columbia, who founded it in 2000. History The ''Diary'' ...

2007 Double Helix Medal dinner
at

2006 Double Helix Medal dinner
at

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2008 Double Helix Medals Dinner, New York , People & Parties With Panache

CSHL Moving Forward with New Faculty Hires Despite Weak Economy

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Double Helix Medal Dinner
Awards established in 2006