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Lasker Award given to Charles D. Kelman, MD
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 Ann Kelman receives the 2004 Albert Lasker Award on behalf of her late husband, Charles D. Kelman, MD. |
NEW YORK — The late Charles D. Kelman, MD, was awarded the 2004 Albert Lasker Medical Research Award for Clinical Medical Research on Friday, at the Pierre Hotel here. Dr. Kelman is the first person to receive the award posthumously. He died of lung cancer on June 1 at the age of 74.
Lasker Awards have been given to 68 scientists who subsequently received the Nobel Prize. The award in medical science was first presented in 1946.
Alston Callahan, MD, long-time friend and colleague of Dr. Kelman, has nominated Dr. Kelman yearly for the award since 1990.
“He was the greatest surgeon of the century,” Dr. Callahan told Ocular Surgery News.
“The clinical research award honors an ophthalmologist who transformed the fate of people with cataracts, which is the leading cause of blindness in the world, whose victims at one time faced risky surgery, a complicated and lengthy recuperation, and the need to wear super-thick spectacles,” said Joseph L. Goldstein, MD, chairman of the international jury of researchers who select the award recipients.
“With ingenuity and single-minded persistence, Charles Kelman pursued the bold fantasy of making cataract surgery into a safe and speedy outpatient procedure, pioneering noninvasive surgical techniques that are now commonly applied in many other kinds of operations. Today, Kelman's technique is the most accepted approach to cataract surgery in the United States and throughout the world, restoring vision to millions of people,” Dr. Goldstein said.
Ann Kelman accepted the Lasker Award in her late husband’s honor. She said that Dr. Kelman knew of his nomination before his death, but not of his winning the award.
Dr. Kelman was awarded an honorarium, which Mrs. Kelman said would be donated to the International Retinal Research Foundation in his memory.
Other 2004 award recipients were Pierre Chambon, MD, Ronald M. Evans, PhD, and Elwood V. Jensen, PhD, who shared the award for basic medical research, and Matthew Meselson, PhD, who received the award for special achievement in medical science.