# Albert Lasker

Source: https://onco.cc/people/albert-lasker/  
OnCo record `albert-lasker` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The man who invented modern advertising put his fortune and his methods behind medical research, founding the Lasker Foundation with his wife Mary in 1942; after his death in 1952 she carried the campaign for cancer research into law.

## Summary

Albert Davis Lasker (1880-1952) built Lord & Thomas into the largest advertising agency of its day and is credited with inventing much of modern advertising. In 1942 he and his wife Mary Woodard Lasker founded the Lasker Foundation, whose stated mission is to improve health by accelerating support for medical research through recognition of research excellence, advocacy, and education; its Lasker Awards became the most watched prize in American medicine. The Laskers applied advertising's tools to research funding: they remade the American Society for the Control of Cancer into the American Cancer Society with a research budget, and lobbied Congress for the National Institutes of Health. Albert died of cancer in 1952; Mary Lasker's campaign culminated in the National Cancer Act of 1971.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-10
- Tags: hero; donor
- Role: Advertising pioneer who co-founded the Lasker Foundation with Mary Lasker in 1942
- Specialisms: Medical research advocacy; Foundation building

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Lasker
- Lasker Foundation: about: https://laskerfoundation.org/about/

## Connected records

- institutions: [Lasker Foundation](https://onco.cc/institutions/lasker-foundation/)
- people: [Mary Lasker](https://onco.cc/people/mary-lasker/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [Knowledge reaches practice too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/albert-lasker.json