Harold Varmus
The Power List 2018 – Masters of the Bench
Harold Varmus
Lewis Thomas University Professor & Senior Advisor to the Dean and Provost, Weill Cornell Medical College
A leading cancer geneticist, Harold Varmus has previously been the director of the National Institute of Health and the National Cancer institute. He originally obtained a degree in English literature – with a desire to be a writer – before deciding to pursue a career in medicine. In 1989, he was the co-winner of a Nobel Prize (alongside Michael Bishop) for the discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes – how malignant tumors are formed from normal cells.
