FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                                  96-18
CONTACT:  Richard Maulsby
          Lisa-Joy Zgorski
          (703)305-8341

                 NOBEL LAUREATES TO RECEIVE
          RONALD H. BROWN AMERICAN INNOVATOR AWARDS
                              
ARLINGTON, VA -- Five of America's most outstanding
inventors, including three Nobel Prize winners, will receive
the Ronald H. Brown American Innovator Award from the U.S.
Commerce Department's Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Oct.
15 at the U.S. Patent Office's former home, now the National
Museum of American Art.  Established in 1995, the American
Innovator Award recognizes the enormous social and economic
contributions made by individual inventors.  This year the
Award has been renamed to honor the late Secretary of
Commerce Ronald H. Brown, who fought to ensure the integrity
of intellectual property rights for all inventors.
Secretary Brown presented the first American Innovator
Awards last year.

"This Award has taken on new meaning," said Assistant
Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and
Trademarks Bruce A. Lehman. "It recognizes that inventors
are heroes and honors the memory of the late Secretary, who
did so much to support the American intellectual property
system."

This year's award recipients:

Dr. Arthur Schawlow, co-inventor of the laser, which has
made surgical, defense, and communication "miracles"
possible.  He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981,
and joined his co-inventor, Dr. Charles Townes, in the
National Inventors Hall of Fame this year.

Dr. Gertude Elion, inventor of the leukemia-fighting drug, 2-
Amino-6-Mercaptropurine.  She also helped develop drugs for
the treatment of gout and that facilitated kidney
transplants, as well as the antiviral agent, acyclovir,
which is widely used to battle herpes virus infections.  Dr.
Elion shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with George
Hitchings and Sir James Black in 1988, and was inducted into
the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.

                        --continued--
Dr. Luis Alvarez, inventor of the radio distance and
direction indicator.  He received the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1968, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall
of Fame in 1978.  Dr. Alvarez, who died in 1988, is also
remembered for his development of the theory that a meteor
strike caused the extinction of the dinosaurs on the earth.

Dr. Percy Julian, inventor of synthesized cortisone for the
treatment of arthritis, and drugs for the treatment of
glaucoma.  Born in Montgomery, Alabama, which offered no
public education for blacks after the eighth grade, Dr.
Julian overcame many challenges in his lifetime.  He died in
1975, and was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall
of Fame in 1990.

Stanley Mazor, and Drs. Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin,
inventors of the microprocessor, delivered the first single-
chip, general-purpose computer central processor (CPU).  The
team was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame
this year.

October 9, 1996

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