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PERSPECTIVES IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Volume 13 · Number 4 · Summer igyo PEYTON ROUS: IN MEMORIAM 1879-1970 CHARLES HUGGINS* An incredible cascade of notable discoveries flowed for sixty years from the laboratory of Peyton Rous at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (Rockefeller University). This astonishing productivity was forged at the laboratory bench by his head and heart and hand. He was a complex man endowed with a felicitous facet of great simplicity enabling him to communicate with Nature. Dr. Rous had an unusual singleness of purpose; nothing could deflect him from his goal. He was highly creative, and his concepts were crystal clear. In the history of science, Dr. Rous will stand in the front rank with the greatest biologists ofthe ages. With Bernard and Pasteur he founded the vast and important field of experimental medicine. The French savants contributed to the new discipline, respectively, physiology and chemistry; Dr. Rous added pathology to these. He was a genius and a genial one. During the six decades 1910-70, the Institute was theheart ofa Periclean creation due to the talented faculty brought together by Simon Flexner. It was the first house established expressly for the work of a scientific elite in America. The creative ferment was stormy. Early among the cohorts were Avery, Landsteiner, Max Bergmann, Jim Murphy, P. A. Levene. Dr. Rous was in the center of the intellectual maelstrom that the young investigators were establishing. He loved the Institute, for it was a good place for gifted experimentalists to work and reflect. His contributions to the Institute and to science were fabulous. Unto him * The Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research, University ofChicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637. 465 much had been given and ofhim much was required and nobody was disappointed—he returned an overabundance of value. He set standards ofexcellence in life, in work, and he did both supremely well. Doubtless, because of Dr. Rous and his confreres, Family Rockefeller derived satisfaction concerning the worthwhileness of their medical project at the Institute. Dr. Rous found out much which was at variance with all previous experience. He disdained to call his work discovery because this sounded puffed up; his business was "finding out." The pearls ofDr. Rous were always big and lustrous: The first agent to cause cancer; A virus (RSV) which evoked solid tumors of animals, thereby creating the vast field of the cancer viruses; The first blood bank (withJ. W. Turner and O. H. Robertson); Rous-McMaster biliary fistula; Isolation and characterization of R-E cells; Outlying acidosis; Factors which urge on malignancy ofanimal cells. In Dr. Rous's laboratory, J. G. Kidd, one of the disciples, found that normal guinea pig plasma can cure a malignant tumor of a mouse. Many more wonderful things did he come on. Peyton Rous lived in a small world ofhis own comprising his family, a few choice friends, a small band of students. He had an unquenchably happy interest in every aspect of living, which made him such a vital person. The Rous circle was surrounded by a wall which was impenetrable but necessary. Isolation was painful to him, for he was fundamentally gregarious, had great zest for life and people, but he knew that a cloister is prerequisite for high creativity. Admission to the inner circle was attained by aspirants to the badge of excellence. The Rous Virtue rubbed off on the fortunate ones, and there resulted an adornment of character. A junior and well-loved member of the Arbeitskreis puts it: "We had a good time." Peyton Rous possessed the wonderful mystique needed for continuing discoveries. He was born with this rare and awesome talent, and he cultivated it assiduously lifelong. Fortunately he made a great discovery while young; RSV was found out in 1910 when he was age thirty-one. Peyton Rous regarded himself as a naturalist. He was an autodidact because creativity can be demonstrated but not taught. He was a perennial 466 Charles Huggins · Peyton Rous Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer 1970 child ofNature. He grew flowers and learned much about them. He loved his cottage in the country with his garden and a softly flowing river, and the wildlife with the drowsy hum...

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