Massry Prize

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

The Massry Prize was established in 1996, and is administered by the Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation. The Prize, of $40,000 and the Massry Lectureship, is bestowed upon scientists who have made substantial recent contributions in the biomedical sciences. Shaul G. Massry, M.D., who established the Massry Foundation, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He served as Chief of its Division of Nephrology from 1974 to 2000. In 2009 the KECK School of Medicine was asked to administer the Prize, and has done so since that time. Out of 25 prizes bestowed until 2021, fourteen were awarded to future Nobel Prize winners. No Massry Prize was awarded in 2020, 2022 and 2023. Awardees are nominated by a scientific committee composed of faculty and researchers from Keck School of Medicine of USC, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Previous laureates Source: KECK School of Medicine

1996 Michael Berridge in the field of Signal Transduction 1997 Judah Folkman in the field of Growth Factors 1998 Mark Ptashne in the field of Regulation of Transcription 1999 Gunter Blobel in the field of Protein Trafficking. Blobel won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine two months after his receipt of the Massry Prize. 2000 Leland H. Hartwell in the field of Cell Cycle. Hartwell won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine one year after he received the Massry Prize. 2001 Avram Hershko and Alexander Varshavsky in the field of Proteolysis and the Ubiquitin System. Hershko won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry three years after he received the Massry Prize. 2002 Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies for their pioneering work on Gene targeting. They won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine five years after they received the Massry Prize. 2003 Roger Kornberg, David Allis and Michael Grunstein in the field of Nuclear Chromatin. Kornberg won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry three years after he received the Massry Prize. 2004 Ada Yonath and Harry Nolla in the field of Ribosomal Structure. Yonath won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry five years after she received the Massry Prize. 2005 Andrew Fire, Craig Mello and David Baulcombe in the field of RNAi. Fire and Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine one year after they received the Massry Prize. 2006 Akira Endo in the field of Novel Therapies specifically for the Discovery of Statins 2007 Michael Phelps for the development of the PET Scan and its Clinical Application 2008 Shinya Yamanaka, James A. Thomson, and Rudolf Jaenisch for their work in the field of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Yamanaka won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine four years after he received the Massry Prize. 2009 Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros for their work in the field of Micro RNA. They won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine fifteen years after they received the Massry Prize. 2010 Randy Schekman for his work regarding the molecular mechanism of defects in secretion that lead to human diseases of development such as spina bifida. He won the 2013 Nobel in Physiology and Medicine three years after he received the Massry Prize. 2011 Franz-Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich for work on Chaperone-assisted protein folding 2012 Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael W. Young for their studies of the molecular basis of circadian rhythms. They won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine five years after they received the Massry Prize. 2013 Michael Sheetz, James A. Spudich and Ronald D. Vale for their work defining molecular mechanisms of intracellular motility 2014 Steven Rosenberg, Zelig Eshhar and James P. Allison for their research on T cells. 2015 Philippe Horvath, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for their research on gene editing. Doudna and Charpentier won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry five years after they received the Massry Prize. 2016 Gero Miesenböck, Peter Hegemann, Karl Deisseroth for their research on optogenetics. 2017 Rob Knight, Jeffrey Gordon, Norman R. Pace for their discovery of the microbiomes. 2018 Gregg Semenza, William Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe for their work on hypoxia. They won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine less than a year after they received the Massry Prize. 2019 Ryszard Kole, Stanley T. Crooke for their seminal work in the development of oligonucleotides targeting messenger RNA as novel therapeutics for a wide range human diseases. 2021 Svante Pääbo, David Reich, Liran Carmel for the discovery of ancient DNA. Pääbo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine less than a year after he received the Massry Prize.

See also List of biomedical science awards

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Massry Prize

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Massry Prize claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, 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 Massry Prize 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 Massry Prize 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 Massry Prize

In research: Massry Prize appears in science 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 Massry Prize 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: Massry Prize is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American academic awards, Biomedical awards, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Massry Prize 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.

How to study Massry Prize in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Massry Prize 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 Massry Prize out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Massry Prize in simple terms?

The Massry Prize was established in 1996, and is administered by the Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation.

Why does Massry Prize matter?

Because it connects several science 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 Massry Prize?

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 Massry Prize.