Francis Peyton Rous

Francis Peyton Rous
200px Francis Peyton Rous
Born	October 5, 1879 Baltimore, Maryland
Died	New York City
Nationality	American
Fields	virology
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Known for	oncoviruses
Notable awards	National Medal of Science (1965) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1966)

Francis Peyton Rous ForMemRS (October 5, 1879 – February 16, 1970) was an American Nobel Prize-winning virologist.

He born in Woodlawn, Maryland in 1879 and received his B.A. and M.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He 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).

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 Hodgkin.

See also

• Harald zur Hausen - German virologist who discovered the role of papilloma virus as a cause of cervical cancer.
• Oncovirus

Further reading

• Cornwall, Claudia M. Catching cancer : the quest for its viral and bacterial causes. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013.

External links

• Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1963–1970, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972