Lemelson MIT Prize

Mr. Heath, the Founder of LifeBot® was recommended for this prize because of his invention of hards-free defibrillation combo pads making possible the modern Automatic External Defibrillator (AED).

The Lemelson Foundation awards several prizes yearly to inventors in United States. The largest is the Lemelson-MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, and is administered through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The winner receives $500,000, making it the largest cash prize for invention in the U.S.

From 1995 through 2006, the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award and the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize were also presented along with the Lemelson-MIT prize. In 2007 the Lifetime Achievement award was replaced with the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability. In 2007 the Lemelson Foundation also introduced two additional $30,000 student prizes to be awarded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A student prize for the California Institute of Technology was added in 2009.

List of winners

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

  • Elwood “Woody” Norris (Lemelson-MIT Prize) for his invention of a hypersonic sound system, which allows sound to be focused with laser-like precision.
  • Robert Dennard (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award)
  • David Berry (Lemelson-MIT Student Prize)

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

  • Robert Langer (Lemelson-MIT Prize)
  • Jacob Rabinow (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for the first disc-shaped magnetic storage media for computers, the magnetic particle clutch, the first straight-line phonograph, the first self-regulating clock, and a “reading machine” which was the first to use the “best match” principle.
  • Akhil Madhani (Lemelson-MIT Student Prize)

1997

  • Douglas Engelbart (Lemelson-MIT Prize) for his invention of the computer mouse.
  • Gertrude Elion (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for the following inventions:
    • 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol), the first treatment for leukemia.
    • azathioprine (Imuran), the first immuno-suppressive agent, used for organ transplants.
    • allopurinol (Zyloprim), for gout.
    • pyrimethamine (Daraprim), for malaria.
    • trimethoprim (Septra), for meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts.
    • acyclovir (Zovirax), for viral herpes.
  • Nathan Kane (Lemelson-MIT Student Prize)

1996

  • Stanley Cohen (Co-recipient, Lemelson-MIT Prize) for the development of methods to combine and transplant genes.
  • Herbert Boyer (Co-recipient, Lemelson-MIT Prize) for the development of methods to combine and transplant genes.
  • Wilson Greatbatch (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for the development of batteries for the early implantable cardiac pacemakers.
  • David Levy (Lemelson-MIT Student Prize)

1995

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