Nationality American Role Expert Grandchildren Jonathan Hodgkin Name Francis Rous Books The Modern Dance of Death | Children Marni Hodgkin Fields virology | |
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Francis peyton rous
Francis Peyton Rous (October 5, 1879 – February 16, 1970) was an American Nobel Prize-winning virologist.
Contents
- Francis peyton rous
- Film over francis peyton rous
- Education and early life
- Career and research
- Awards and honors
- Personal life
- References
Film over francis peyton rous
Education and early life
Rous was born in Woodlawn, Maryland in 1879 and received his B.A. and M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Career and research
Rous was involved in the discovery of the role of viruses in the transmission of certain types of cancer. In 1966 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work.
In 1911, as a pathologist he made his seminal observation, that a malignant tumor (specifically, a sarcoma) growing on a domestic chicken could be transferred to another fowl simply by exposing the healthy bird to a cell-free filtrate. This finding, that cancer could be transmitted by a virus (now known as the Rous sarcoma virus, a retrovirus), was widely discredited by most of the field's experts at that time. Since he was a relative newcomer, it was several years before anyone even tried to replicate his prescient results. Although clearly some influential researchers were impressed enough to nominate him to the Nobel Committee as early as 1926 (and in many subsequent years, until he finally received the award, 40 years later).
Awards and honors
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Peyton Rous was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1940, he won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1958 and the National Medal of Science in 1965.
Personal life
In his later life he wrote biographies of Simon Flexner and Karl Landsteiner.
His wife Marion died in 1985. His daughter Marni Hodgkin was a children's book editor, and the wife of another Nobel Prize winner, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.