Jensen will be one of three scientists to share the 2004 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. The 84-year-old scientist, who became a visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati in 2002, will be honored for his work in the 1950s and 1960s at the University of Chicago.

In the 1970s, other scientists used Jensen's discoveries to develop tamoxifen, an anti-estrogen medication that has been taken by millions of women to treat or prevent breast cancer.

OTHER WINNERS

• Dr. Albert B. Sabin, the Cincinnati researcher who developed the oral polio vaccine credited with nearly wiping out the disease, received a Lasker Award in 1956. • The 2004 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research will be shared by Pierre Chambon, of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (Strasbourg, France), Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Elwood Jensen of the University of Chicago for their hormone-related discoveries. • The 2004 Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research goes to the late Charles Kelman, affiliated with the New York Medical College, for revolutionizing the surgical removal of cataracts through noninvasive surgery.

The Lasker awards, announced today, will be presented in New York on Oct. 1. Other winners include the inventor of modern cataract surgery, a molecular biologist whose discoveries about DNA replication deeply influenced genetic research, and two scientists whose hormone-related discoveries revolutionized the fields of endocrinology and metabolism.

Lasker will share a $50,000 prize with two other scientists.

"It is quite an honor. I've won other awards that had bigger prizes, but none that have so much history and none that have generated so much attention," Jensen said.

Officials with the Lasker Awards say Jensen's work paved the way to treatments for breast cancer that save or prolong more than 100,000 lives a year.

Jensen grew up in Springfield, Ohio. He studied to be a chemist, ultimately earning a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com