What Is A Harper Avery Award? The Grey's Anatomy Accolade Explained

This article contains discussions of sexual harassment and assault.

As Catherine Avery, a pioneering surgeon played by Debbie Allen on "Grey's Anatomy," explains during a ceremony presenting the Harper Avery Award, the honor is meant to distinguish the most innovative, game-changing surgeons in the field. "Surgery is the boldest and most fearless of the healing arts," she tells a room in the season 10 episode "Go It Alone," where Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) is a contender for the award. "The Harper Avery Award celebrates those who have destroyed obstacles, altered the direction, and invented the future of how we are to live and heal and thrive," she continues. "The surgeons in this room are redefining medicine for generations to come."

This is all to say that, within the framework of "Grey's Anatomy," a Harper Avery Award is the highest recognition any surgeon can possibly achieve. During Dr. Meredith Grey's (Ellen Pompeo) first year as a surgical intern, we learn that her famous surgeon mother, Dr. Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), who by this point is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, won two Harper Averys during her career. In season 4, after Isaiah Washington's Dr. Preston Burke leaves the Seattle hospital where the show is set — and, in the process, leaves his fiancée Cristina at the altar — it's revealed that he won a Harper Avery, sending Cristina into an existential crisis. Remember how Cristina is nominated in season 10, which she earns after 3D printing a heart conduit for a baby boy? She loses only because the Harper Avery Foundation buys the hospital in season 9, meaning that Cristina is secretly "ineligible" for the award. Despite this line in the sand, Meredith wins her Harper Avery in season 14 for a groundbreaking abdominal wall transplant.

The Harper Avery is a major thing in the world of "Grey's Anatomy," even as it undergoes some major changes ... and even though a lot about the award doesn't really make sense. Let's get into everything else you need to know about the Harper Avery Award, which is eventually renamed the Catherine Fox Award, on "Grey's Anatomy."

Unsurprisingly, the Harper Avery Award was first created by, well, Dr. Harper Avery, a surgeon played by Chelcie Ross, who hoped to encourage ambitious surgeons to keep pushing boundaries and creating new techniques and procedures. We first meet Harper in season 6 and learn that his grandson, Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams), works alongside all our favorite surgeons at what's then called Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital. Over time, we also learn that winning the Harper Avery Award doesn't just confer an honor or title; the winning surgeon also gets half a million dollars.

The entire concept of the Harper Avery Award hits a major snag, though, when it's discovered (during season 14) that Harper was a sexual harasser and abuser and personally victimized women in surgery throughout his career. To make matters even worse for Meredith, she realizes that her mother removed her colleague and close friend, Dr. Marie Cerone (Rachel Ticotin), from a study of laparoscopic biliary reconstruction, a surgery that won Ellis one of her two Harper Averys. Why did Ellis remove her name? Well, Marie was one of Harper's victims and became part of a settlement intended to keep her quiet; Ellis, always a cutthroat surgeon, took Marie's name off the study so that there wouldn't be a conflict of interest, making it possible for Ellis to win the award at all.

In the wake of all this — and the ensuing public fallout — Meredith publicly returns her and her mother's Harper Avery Awards, and Catherine tries to figure out how to salvage the situation. At the end of season 14 in the episode "Bad Reputation," Meredith and Jackson decide the award should bear a different name and choose Catherine's name, using her maiden name, Fox, instead of her married name (which is now fairly disgraced). The Catherine Fox Award and the Catherine Fox Foundation are relaunched to honor the women whose careers Harper derailed, and the award lives on without such a negative association.

The idea behind the fictional Harper Avery Award is interesting, don't get me wrong — but the concept of the award itself introduces some major to minor plot holes throughout "Grey's Anatomy." The first and frankly most egregious thing is the situation with Cristina and her extremely political and controversial loss. For context, a handful of Seattle Grace-Mercy West doctors board a small plane during the season 8 finale to perform an advanced surgery in Boise, Idaho, including Meredith, Cristina, Meredith's husband Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw), Dr. Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), and Meredith's half-sister Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh). When the plane crashes in the remote woods, Derek and Arizona sustain massive injuries to their hand and leg, respectively, and Mark is revealed to have serious internal injuries; Lexie, crushed under part of the fallen plane, dies shortly thereafter.

These doctors, including Arizona's wife, Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), sue the hospital for putting them on the plane in the first place (during season 9) and win, effectively bankrupting the hospital. To prevent the dissolution of Seattle Grace-Mercy West, the group bands together to buy the hospital, but ultimately needs funding from Catherine and the Harper Avery Foundation, which they accept. The fact that Cristina winning the award would be some sort of conflict of interest is what causes her to leave Seattle for Switzerland in season 10 (which is when Sandra Oh leaves the series).

So how is Meredith able to win this award, four seasons later, without so much as a whisper or mutter about the fact that she co-owns what's now called Grey Sloan Memorial (in honor of Mark and Lexie) alongside the foundation? I don't know! The show never explains it! My other main quibble with the Harper Avery is kind of shallow, which is that there's a massive ceremony every year for, apparently, one single award, which requires a whole bunch of doctors to travel from all over the country? How can that be profitable for Frito-Lay and the Catherine Fox Foundation? 

Anyway, my quibbles aside, the renamed Catherine Fox Award is a big thing on "Grey's Anatomy." Find out for yourself while you binge the series on Hulu or Netflix.