Year of birth: 1931

Year of death: 2002

Wikipedia

BIOGRAPHY

He received his initial medical training in the US Public Health Services in Baltimore and San Francisco. He then joined the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda in 1960. He became chairman of the medical branch of the National Cancer Institute in 1968.

In 1971, he was elected chairman of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), a post he held for 20 years. In 1976 he moved to Wisconsin to assume chairmanship of the Department of Oncology. He subsequently became director of the Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Centre for 20 years until he stepped down in 1997. He was a founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the first Examination Board Committee member of the American Board of Internal Medicine in medical oncology. He was elected ASCO president in 1972 and AACR president in 1979.

He played a central role in the understanding of cytogenetics in chronic myelogenous leukemia, the development of a curative treatment for Hodgkin’s disease, and adjuvant chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer patients. He used his international links to develop a contract with the Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan with Gianni Bonadonna, for the testing of the early CMF breast cancer studies, after CMF had been developed at the NCI’s.