November 30, 2001

The MGH recently announced the awarding of its highest honor for research – the Warren Triennial prize – to Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health; and to J. Craig Venter, PhD, president and chief scientific officer of Celera Genomics Corporation.

Venter and Collins achieved worldwide acclaim last year when the two scientists announced that their respective groups had all but completed the mapping and sequencing of the human genome, thereby opening up new realms of possibility in medicine and genetics.

The Warren Triennial Prize (shown at right) has been a feature of the MGH research community since 1871. John Mason Warren endowed the hospital with a sum to be used every three years for an award given in honor of his father, John Collins Warren, MD, co-founder of the MGH and its first surgeon. In 1846, John Collins Warren removed a tumor from patient Gilbert Abbott during the first public demonstration of the use of ether in a surgical procedure.

Until 1949, the award recognized the best dissertation sent to the superintendent of the MGH. After 1953, however, the Warren Triennial Prize became associated with an invited lectureship. Generally, two awardees have shared the honor each year. Fourteen of the Warren Triennial Prize winners subsequently have won the Nobel Prize, and two Nobel winners later have given Warren lectures.

The Warren Triennial Lectures will be presented during a two-day period, with Venter speaking on "Sequencing the Human Genome: The Gateway to a New Era in Science and Medicine" Jan. 7, 2002. Collins will be giving his talk, "The Human Genome Project and the Future of Medicine," the following day. Both lectures will be held from 4 to 5 pm in the O'Keeffe Auditorium.

The Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee on Research, sponsors of the Warren Triennial Prize Lectures, invite the MGH community to hear the presentations and to take part in the receptions that will follow. For more information, call the Office of the Director of Research at (617) 724-2167.