Dr. Harold E. Varmus is a distinguished American scientist and Nobel laureate whose career has profoundly shaped modern biomedical research. Currently serving as the Lewis Thomas University Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, he has held numerous prestigious leadership positions throughout his illustrious career. After earning his medical degree from Columbia University, Dr. Varmus established himself as a leading researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, where he spent over two decades conducting groundbreaking work. His exceptional contributions to science led to his appointment as Director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999, where he became the first Nobel laureate to lead this major research institution. Dr. Varmus subsequently served as President of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 2000 to 2010 and as Director of the National Cancer Institute from 2010 to 2015.
Dr. Varmus's most transformative contribution came through his collaborative research with J. Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco, where they discovered the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes, fundamentally changing the scientific understanding of cancer development. Their groundbreaking work in the mid-1970s revealed that cancer-causing genes actually originated from normal cellular genes, which they termed proto-oncogenes, demonstrating that cancer can occur through the activation of the organism's own genes. This paradigm-shifting discovery earned them the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989 and has since become foundational to modern cancer biology. Their research led to the identification of numerous cellular genes that normally control growth and development but become cancer-causing when mutated. This work has had profound implications for understanding the genetic basis of cancer and has guided the development of targeted cancer therapies worldwide.
Beyond his laboratory discoveries, Dr. Varmus has been a visionary leader in shaping scientific policy and infrastructure, co-founding the Public Library of Science to promote open access to scientific research and establishing PubMed Central during his NIH directorship. His leadership significantly increased the NIH budget and initiated major research initiatives including the Cancer Genome Atlas and the National Lung Screening Trial. Dr. Varmus has authored over 300 scientific publications and five books, including his memoir The Art and Politics of Science, and has mentored generations of scientists who now lead cancer research worldwide. His ongoing commitment to global health is evident through his work with the Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative and his continued advocacy for scientific integrity and evidence-based policy. Dr. Varmus remains actively engaged in research, writing, and scientific leadership, continuing to influence the direction of biomedical research in the 21st century.
