Dr. Harold Varmus is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Prior to this position, Dr. Varmus was appointed Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by President Clinton, a position he held from 1993 until the end of 1999. Much of Dr. Varmus’ scientific work was conducted during 23 years as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he and Dr. J. Michael Bishop and their co-workers demonstrated the cellular origins of the oncogene of a chicken retrovirus. The discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer. For this work, Dr. Bishop and Dr. Varmus received many awards, including the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Dr. Varmus is also widely recognized for his studies of the replication cycles of retroviruses and hepatitis B viruses, the functions of genes implicated in cancer, and the development of mouse models for human cancer (the focus of much of the current work in his laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center).

Dr. Varmus earned a master’s degree in English at Harvard University, and is a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. His scientific training occurred first as a Public Health Service officer at the NIH, where he studied bacterial gene expression with Dr. Ira Pastan, and then as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Bishop at UCSF. In addition to authoring more than 300 scientific papers and four books, including an introduction to the genetic basis of cancer for a general audience, Dr. Varmus has been an advisor to the U.S. government, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, and many academic institutions. He served on the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chairs the Board of Directors of Public Library of Science and is involved in initiatives to promote science in other countries.