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health through medical research and education.

You plan to start with its inception, and how the idea grew?

Yes.

This is an outline of some of the things we did directly.

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation was founded by Albert and me in December of 1942, at the time Albert was liquidating his advertising agency, Lord & Thomas. We put sums of money into the Foundation from time to time in the first few years, but no very substantial funds were given to it until the time of Albert's death, when it received about five million 300 thousand dollars in 1952.

From the beginning of our marriage Albert and I both agreed that we were interested in the field of support, especially in the support and enlargement of medical research and the increase of health insurance through Federal and voluntary organizations for the people of the United States. What we did about these things comes later.

One of the first activities of the Foundation was to establish the Lasker Awards. The first award was given by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene for outstanding contributions in the field of mental health to William Menninger in 1944.

How did this idea come about?