John Kingsbury Frost

Education

The first area of the body to be studied in this way was the female genital tract, using the Pap smear invented by Georgios Papanikolaou. He attended the University of California, Berkeley for his undergraduate degree.

Career

Frost and other physicians expanded the field to allow for cytopathologic evaluation of the lung, bladder, and many other body sites. Frost was best known as a teacher of cytopathology. He organized and directed a school of cytotechnology and created and led a postgraduate Institute to teach the techniques to physicians.

Frost was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

He received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco. In 1956 he took a position as an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for his entire career until his retirement in 1989.

In 1959 he was the founding head of the division of cytopathology and continued to direct the division for 30 years. He was the author of 347 publications, including the definitive monograph on the subject of cytopathology, The Cell in Health and Disease, published in 1969 with a second edition in 1986.

In addition to diagnostic services and professional training, his laboratory also carried out research, notably in the creation of the dyes (stains) which are used to highlight the characteristics of the cells so they can be evaluated.

The most popular nuclear stain, the Gill hematoxylin series, was created in Frost"s cytopathology department in the 1970s by cytotechnologist Gary West. Gill. Frost died August 29, 1990 in Baltimore. The cause of death was from complications of therapy of lung cancer, although he was a lifelong nonsmoker.

The division he founded and led at Hopkins is now named the John K. Frost Cytopathology Laboratory.

lieutenant is the highest award in the field The citation described him as "the most prominent educator and teacher of cytopathology in the United States.".

Achievements

• He served in the United States Army for five years, 1948 to 1953, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1979 he received the Maurice Goldblatt Cytology Award from the International Academy of Cytology.

Works

• book

  • Cell in Health and Disease (Monographs in Clinical Cytology)

Connections

Father:

Roland Curtis Frost

Mother:

Madeleine (Veale) Frost

Spouse:

Moira Anne Keane

child:

Therese Anne Olivia Frost

child:

Noreen Anne Regina Frost

child:

James Keane Frost

child:

Rosanne Grace Frost

child:

Moira Anne Frost

child:

Sheila Anne Maureen Frost

child:

John Kingsbury Frost