Harold Varmus received the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Dr. J. Michael Bishop, his former colleague at the University of California, San Francisco, for their discovery of cellular genes that are progenitors of retroviral oncogenes. This discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer.

The Director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999, Dr. Varmus was President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for the following ten years and was a co-chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from January 2009 until he became the Director of the National Cancer Institute on July 12, 2010.

Dr. Varmus has authored over 350 scientific papers and five books, including a recent memoir titled The Art and Politics of Science.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine and recipient of the National Medal of Science, as well as the Vannevar Bush Award.

Photo credit - Matthew Septimus