May 4, 2006
Mary-Claire King twice honored for breast cancer research
Dr. Mary-Claire King, the American Cancer Society Research Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences at the UW, has been named winner of the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Medicine and the Weizmann Women & Science Award. Both awards honor King’s pioneering work in breast cancer research.
King was the first to prove the existence of the first hereditary breast cancer gene. She also studies human genetic diversity and evolution, and the application of genomics to human rights issues.
The Heineken Prize for Medicine has been awarded every other year since 1989. The award is one of six prizes for science, scholarship, and art that will be presented during a special session of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on Sept. 28 in Amsterdam.
The 2006 Weizmann Women & Science Award, given by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, will be presented on June 12 at Rockefeller University in New York. The institute conducts interdisciplinary scientific research in technology, medicine and health, energy, agriculture, and the environment.
King has been at the UW since 1996 and is a member of the American Association for Advancement for Science, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.
