Willem Kolff, the great pioneer of artificial organs, has won over 100 international and national awards in his long lifetime. Now at, 92, Dr Kolff has been awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in medicine: the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, often regarded as the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
At a ceremony in New York City on September 27 Dr Kolff was honoured for his invention of the artificial kidney. Mary Lasker, who with her late husband Albert inaugurated the awards in the 1940s, commented 'the development of an artificial kidney constitutes one of the monumental life-saving advances in the history of modern medicine.'
Dr Kolff shares this year's Award with Dr Belding Scribner, who developed the Scribner Shunt, making repeated dialysis sessions for ESRD patients a practical possibility. The two doctors share an honorarium of $50,000 - Dr Kolff will use his to fund his latest project, a wearable artificial lung. He also receives a splendid trophy, a statuette of the Winged Victory of Samothrace - The Lasker Foundation's symbol of victory over disability, disease and death - which Kadija Raoudi of Membrana was able to admire when she visited Dr Kolff at home in Pennsylvania.
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