Existing comment:
Harold Varmus born 1939
Born Oceanside, New York
Most cancers, in the opinion of virologist Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute since 2010, "will become chronic disorders that we take care of and sometimes cure."
Varmus has been thinking about the complexities of the disease for most of his career. In 1989 he and his research partner J. Michael Bishop won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their studies on the genetic basis of cancers and the role of viruses in their formation. Both as an award-winning scientist and as a high-level administrator -- he also served as director of the National Institutes of Health and president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center -- Varmus has mobilized global cooperation and advanced research on cancer and its potential cures. Jon Friedman's oil sketch, a study for a Sloan-Kettering portrait commission, conveys Varmus's informality as well as a direct and animated interaction with the viewer.
Jon R. Friedman (born 1947)
Oil and graphite on paper, 2010 |