astronomy

Mary Lasker

Mary Lasker is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mary Lasker rather than just read about it. In short: 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.

Key takeaways

Mary Lasker belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mary Lasker to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mary Lasker from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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. While Lasker was growing up, her mother, an active civic leader, instilled in Lasker the values of urban beautification. Lasker attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and graduated from Radcliffe College with a major in Art History in 1923. She next pursued postgraduate study at Oxford before settling in New York City. Lasker worked as an art dealer at Reinhardt Galleries in New York and married the owner, art dealer Paul Reinhardt, in 1926. After divorcing in 1934, she created a fabric company named Hollywood Patterns.

Health advocate In 1938 she became the secretary of the Birth Control Federation of America, the precursor of the Planned Parenthood Federation. 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. The Laskers supported the national health insurance proposal under President Harry S. Truman. After its failure, Mary Lasker saw research funding as the best way to promote public health. With her husband, she created the Lasker Foundation in 1942 to promote medical research. The Lasker Award is considered the most prestigious American award in medical research. As of 2015, eighty-seven Lasker laureates have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize. 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. Ironically, her husband's ad agency had promoted smoking with the slogan, "L.S.M.F.T.—Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco" 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. 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. In 1970, Congress passed a law banning the advertising of cigarettes on television, so the anti-smoking commercials likewise went off the air. Lasker was instrumental in getting the US government to fund the war on cancer in 1971. Lasker was also prominent in lobbying Eleanor Roosevelt to endorse Lyndon B. Johnson's efforts to become the 1960 Democratic nominee. 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. On her death, she left more than $10 million to the Lasker Foundation.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Organizations Birth Control Federation of America Planned Parenthood National Committee for Mental Hygiene Lasker Foundation National Health Education Foundation National Institutes of Health American Cancer Society Research to Prevent Blindness Cancer Research Institute United Cerebral Palsy Research and Education Foundation Museum of Modern Art American Heart Association

See also Albert Lasker – Husband Lasker Award – Given out by the Lasker Foundation History of cancer Cancer (2015 PBS film) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

References

External links

Notable New Yorkers - Mary Lasker Biography, photographs, and interviews of Mary Lasker from the Notable New Yorkers collection of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University. The Mary Lasker Papers - Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mary Lasker

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mary Lasker claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mary Lasker before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mary Lasker ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mary Lasker

In research: Mary Lasker appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mary Lasker in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mary Lasker is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1900 births, 1994 deaths, 20th-century American philanthropists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mary Lasker outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mary Lasker in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mary Lasker means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mary Lasker out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mary Lasker in simple terms?

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.

Why does Mary Lasker matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mary Lasker?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mary Lasker.