James W. Cronin and Val L. Fitch received the Research Corporation Award “for their demonstration that the combined symmetry of parity and of charge conjugation is not, as had been previously believed, a universal symmetry law of nature.”
The Research Corporation Award was approved by the Board at its January 1925 meeting. The Research Corporation Award was not a grant, but was instead designed to recognize outstanding achievements in science by “one who has not undertaken the utilization of his research work for his own pecuniary benefit, whether this has been due to voluntary action on his part, to the circumstances of his employment, or to scientific or professional affiliations.” At its inception, it was one of very few recognitions of scientific achievement. The award consisted of a plaque molded in white Bakelite (designed by sculptor Herbert Adams who also designed the bronze doors at the Library of Congress and the Vanderbilt memorial bronze doors at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York); an honorarium that ranged over the course of the award from $2,500 to $10,000; and a banquet in honor of the recipient.
The first awardee was John Abel, an American biochemist who held the first chair in pharmacology at Johns Hopkins from 1893 until his retirement in 1932. Abel’s work was largely directed toward the isolation and characterization of hormones. In 1897, he isolated a physiologically active substance from the adrenal glands which he named epinephrine (also known as adrenalin). By 1912, Abel had formulated the idea of an artificial kidney, and in 1914 he isolated amino acids from the blood for the first time. In 1926, he announced that he had crystallized insulin though this work was not generally accepted until the mid 1930s. After his retirement Abel devoted his energies to a study of the tetanus toxin.
Abel was followed by such luminaries as Andrew Ellicott Douglass; Ernest Lawrence, Vannevar Bush, Francis Crick and James D. Watson, among others. In a 1949 correspondence, Bush recalled “I have never forgotten the fact that when I received the award myself, it was one of the most pleasant things that had been given me, particularly because of the graceful way in which it was done. Incidentally, I was in Ernest Lawrence’s office just a day or two ago and sitting at his desk I found his award plaque before me.”
Ten to 12 people were nominated each year and an advisory group, made up of scientists and administrators in the sciences, voted for their choice. The 1949 advisory group included: Merle Tuve of the Carnegie Institution; L.A. DuBridge, president of CalTech; E.O. Lawrence of University of California; Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institution; Hugh S. Taylor of Princeton; Bruno Rossi of MIT; Percy Bridgman of Harvard; and Henry Eyring of University of Utah.
The awards were made sporadically—and were postponed during World War II—until 1947 when they became an annual event. They were terminated in 1969.