Mary-Claire King, American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, is recognized with the 2014 Lasker∼Koshland Special Achievement Award for her wide range of contributions to biology and medicine as well as human rights. King's development of mathematical models of genetics and discovery of the role that a single gene locus, BRCA1, has in hereditary breast cancer have had wide influence, and she has worked tirelessly to apply genetics to reunite missing persons, such as the 'lost children' of Argentina, with their families.
