The 2009 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award honors two scientists for their discoveries concerning nuclear reprogramming. This process instructs fully specialized adult cells how to turn into stem cells that can guide the formation of any tissue type. Nuclear reprogramming thus provides the means to create invaluable materials for experimental or therapeutic purposes.

Stanley Norman Cohen (born June 30, 1935 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American geneticist.

Cohen is a graduate of Rutgers University, and received his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1960. Following subsequent training at various institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1968.

Sir John Bertrand Gurdon, FRS (born 2 October 1933) is a British developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning.

Career

After attending Eton College, Gurdon studied with Michael Fischberg at Oxford, and then did postdoctural work at Caltech. His early posts were at the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford (1962–71).

Dr Michael John Berridge, FRS FMedSci (born 22 October 1938) is a Rhodesian-born British physiologist and biochemist. He is best known for his work on cellular transmembrane signalling, in particular the discovery that inositol triphosphate acts as a second messenger, linking events at the plasma membrane with the release of Ca²⁺ within the cell.As of 2009, he is the Emeritus Babraham Fellow in the Signalling Programme Department of the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, and honorary professor of cell signalling at the University of Cambridge.

Aaron Temkin Beck (born July 18, 1921) is an American psychiatrist and a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Beck is known as the father of cognitive therapy and inventor of a number of the widely used self-report measures, including the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Hopelessness Scale, Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation (BSS), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Youth Inventories. He is the President of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research and the Honorary President of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, which certifies qualified Cognitive Therapists.

Beck attended Brown University, graduating magna cum laude in 1942. At Brown he was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, was an associate editor of the Brown Daily Herald, and received the Francis Wayland Scholarship, William Gaston Prize for Excellence in Oratory, and Philo Sherman Bennett Essay Award. Beck attended Yale Medical School, graduating with an M.D. in 1946.