Background
Harris, Henry was born on January 28, 1925. Son of Sam and Ann Harris.
Harris, Henry was born on January 28, 1925. Son of Sam and Ann Harris.
Bachelor, University Sydney, 1944. Bachelor of Science, University Sydney, 1950. Bachelor of Medicine, University Sydney.
DM (honorary), University Sydney, 1983. DM (honorary), Oxford University, England, 1979. Doctor of Philosophy, Oxford University, England, 1954.
Master of Arts, Oxford University, England. Doctor of Medicine, University Geneva, 1981. Doctor of Science, University Edinburgh, 1975.
In 1929 the family emigrated to Australia. Educated at Sydney Boys High School from 1937-1941, he first read modern languages in 1941, but was subsequently attracted to medicine through his literary interests. In the early 1950s, Harris moved to England to study at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford under Howard Florey.
In 1960 he was appointed as head of the new department of cell biology at the John Innes Institute, and in 1964 he succeeded Florey as Head of the Dunn School, and in 1979 he was appointed as Oxford"s Regius Professor of Medicine succeeding Sir Richard Doll.
Harris"s research interests were primarily focused on cancer cells and of their differences from normal cells, and later on the possibilities of genetic modification of human cell lines with material of other species in order to increase the range of genetic markers. Harris and his colleagues developed some of the basic techniques for investigating and measuring genes along the human chromosome.
In 1965 he reported his observation that most nuclear Ribonucleic acid was non-coding, a view that was not widely accepted until years later. In 1969 Harris showed that when malignant cancer cells were fused with normal fibroblasts, the resulting hybrids were not malignant, thus demonstrating the existence of genes that had the ability to suppress malignancy.
Work on these tumour suppressor genes has become a worldwide industry.
In 1983 Harris was elected to the Australian Academy of science as a Corresponding Fellow. In 1993 he was knighted. Much of Harris"s work has been supported by Cancer Research United Kingdom (formerly the Cancer Research Campaign).
He died on 31 October 2014, aged 89.
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Member American Red Cross, 1968—1978, chairman animals research board, 1976—1978. Member council European Molecular Biology Organization, 1974—1976. Member science advisory committee Cyclic Redundancy Check.
Master: American Association Cancer Research (correspondent), Max Planck Society (honorary). Fellow: Royal College of Physicians, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Royal College Pathologists, Royal College Pathologists Australia (honorary), Royal Society (council member 1971-1972). Member: American Association Pathologists (honorary).
Married Alexandra Brodsky, 1950. 3 children.