Background
Rous, Francis Peyton was born on October 5, 1879 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Son of Charles and Frances Anderson (Wood) Rous.
scientist university professor virologist
Rous, Francis Peyton was born on October 5, 1879 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Son of Charles and Frances Anderson (Wood) Rous.
Bachelor of Arts, Johns Hopkins, 1900, Doctor of Medicine 1905. (honorary) Doctor of Science, Cambridge University, University of Michigan, 1938. Yale, University of Birmingham, McGill University, 1949, University of Chicago, 1954, Rockefeller Institute, 1959, Jefferson University, 1966, University of Hartford, 1967.
Doctor of Medicine (honorary), University Zurich, 1946, Jefferson Medical College, 1966.
Doctor of Laws, Saint Lawrence University, 1963.
From Johns Hopkins University. 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.
Member, Rockefeller Institute for Medical. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Member National Academy Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Association American Physicians, American Association Pathologists and Bacteriologists, American Society for Experimental Pathology, Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Harvey Society, New York Pathological Society, New York Academy of Medicine, American Association for Cancer Research, Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Omega Alpha, Sigma Xi.
Foreign.
Member British Physiological Society, Pathology Society of Great Britain and Ireland, American Society for Microbiology, New York Pathological Society, Connecticut Medical Society. Member British Medical Association, Academie de Medecine, Paris.
Member Royal Academy Sciences of Denmark, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Club: Century.
Married Marion Eckford de Kay, June 15, 1915. Children: Marion (Mistress Alan Hodgkin), Ellen deKay, Phoebe (Mistress Thomas J. Wilson).
