2009-09-01
Long-time
ASH member, Janet D. Rowley, MD, of the University of Chicago
has had a very special summer. On August 12, she was honored at the White House
by President Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian
award in the United States.
She shares this honor with a group of 16 highly distinguished international
figures, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, film star Sidney Poitier, civil rights
leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,
and retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Dr. Rowley was also
named the 2009 winner of the $500,000 Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation
Genetics Prize for her groundbreaking research on recurring chromosome
abnormalities in leukemias and lymphomas. These were among the first studies to
show that cancer is a genetic disease.
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