Past Recipients
Former winners of the Dickson Prize in Medicine are a who’s-who of biomedical science—researchers whose discoveries have reshaped how we understand and treat disease. The prize has an impressive track record of identifying breakthrough thinkers. Many recipients also win Nobel Prizes, Lasker Awards and other top honors. Taken together, Dickson Prize laureates trace the frontier of medicine itself, from the birth of molecular biology to CRISPR and modern cell engineering.
2026 Dickson Prize in Medicine Xiaowei Zhuang
Xiaowei Zhuang, David B. Arnold Jr. Professor of Science, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and professor of physics, Harvard University, pioneered the development of super-resolution imaging and genome-scale imaging methods.
Zhuang, who is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, invented stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), a super-resolution imaging method that broke the diffraction limit and allowed light microscopy with nanometer-scale resolution. Using STORM, she discovered novel molecular structures in cells. She invented a genome-scale imaging method, multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization (MERFISH), which enabled spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics, 3D genomics, epigenomics and functional genomics. Using MERFISH, she made discoveries in areas ranging from molecular signatures, spatial organization and functions of cells in complex tissues to the 3D genome organization and gene regulation in cells.
Her technologies have transformed multiple fields, especially neuroscience and cancer research, and are now widely used to study tissue organization in health, aging and disease.
Dickson Prize in Medicine Winners
2020
2010
2000
2000 Elizabeth H. Blackburn, PhD
1999 James E. Darnell Jr., MD
1998 Richard D. Klausner, MD
1997 Edward E. Harlow Jr., PhD,
and Eric S. Lander, PhD
1996 Philippa Marrack, PhD
1995 Ronald M. Evans, PhD
1994 Bert Vogelstein, MD
1993 Stanley B. Prusiner, MD
1992 Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD
1991 Phillip A. Sharp, PhD
1990
1990 Ernst Knobil, PhD
1989 Bernard Moss, MD, PhD
1988 Leroy E. Hood, MD, PhD
1987 Elvin A. Kabat, PhD
1986 J. Michael Bishop, MD
1985 Robert C. Gallo, MD
1984 Solomon H. Snyder, MD
1983 Eric R. Kandel, MD
1982 Francis H. Ruddle, PhD
1981 Philip Leder, MD
1980
1980 David H. Hubel, MD,
and Torsten N. Wiesel, MD
1979 Bert W. O’Malley, MD
1978 Paul Greengard, PhD
1977 Roger Guillemin, MD, PhD
1976 Frank J. Dixon, MD
1975 Elizabeth F. Neufeld, PhD
1974 Stephen W. Kuffler, MD
1973 John H. Gibbon Jr., MD
1972 Solomon A. Berson, MD,
and Rosalyn S. Yalow, PhD
1971 Earl W. Sutherland Jr., MD