From 1995 through 2006, the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award and the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize were also presented along with the Lemelson-MIT prize. In 2007 the Lifetime Achievement award was replaced with the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability. Also introduced in 2007 were two additional $30,000 student prizes to be awarded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Al Gross (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for his invention of the first walkie-talkie, CB radio, the telephone pager, and the cordless telephone.
Stephanie Kwolek (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for her work on liquid-crystalline polymers and the development of the armored fabric Kevlar.
Jacob Rabinow (Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award) for the first disc-shaped magnetic storage media for computers, the magnetic particle clutch, the first straight-line phonograph, the first self-regulating clock, and a "reading machine" which was the first to use the "best match" principle.