If Laurie Garrett hadn't interrupted her studies at Berkeley, where she had advanced to a doctoral candidacy in immunology, she probably would have become a professor at a well-known university doing AIDS research, said Dr. Leonard Herzenberg, a Stanford geneticist and longtime mentor to Garrett. What tempted Garrett away from this path, was another of her passions—journalism. It was a fortuitous shift in direction that has resulted in a remarkable career, including eight years as a science correspondent with National Public Radio. In 1986, Ms. Garrett left NPR to join Newsday, where 10 years later she received her profession's highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, for a series of reports made from Zaire on the outbreak of the Ebola virus.

In addition to her many achievements as a radio and newspaper journalist, Ms. Garrett has enjoyed considerable success with other forms of media, such as her widely acclaimed best selling work of nonfiction, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, which also served as the basis of a four-hour documentary that she co-produced for Turner Broadcasting. Recently, Ms. Garrett served as host of the five-hour PBS series, "Great Minds of Medicine."

In addition to the Pulitzer, Ms. Garrett has received numerous other honors, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Special Citation for Outstanding Journalism (1995), the Times Mirror Journalist of the Year Award (1995), and the American Public Health Association Presidential Citation (1996).

Award Presenter

While pursuing her doctoral degree in Immunology, Laurie Garrett came to know and work with two Stanford geneticists, Professor Leonard Herzenberg and his wife, Professor Leonore Herzenberg, who are widely regarded for their pioneering work on the relationship between the supply of the molecule glutathione in CD4 T-cells and the onset of AIDS.