HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

NIH Director To Speak at Commencement

Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and an internationally recognized authority on retroviruses and the genetic basis of cancer, will be the principal speaker during the Afternoon Exercises at the University's 345th Commencement on Thursday, June 6.

"Harold Varmus has provided outstanding leadership at the National Institutes of Health during a period of critical importance to the future of science in our society," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "His own Nobel Prize-winning research in genetics has contributed greatly to our fundamental understanding of cancer and other devastating diseases. At a time when support for basic research is at unusual risk, there is a pressing need for broader and deeper awareness of the process of scientific discovery, and its capacity to change lives for the better. Dr. Varmus has been at the center of this process as a scientist and as a leading public official.

We look forward to welcoming him to Harvard in June."

"The nation needs an increased awareness of the importance of the research scientist in the field of health care," said Champ Lyons Jr., president of the Harvard Alumni Association. "As the son of a physician who devoted his professional career to the challenges of academic medicine, I have great admiration for Dr. Varmus." Varmus, a virologist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1989, is the first Nobel laureate to serve as director of the NIH.

Varmus' prize-winning work, with J. Michael Bishop of the University of California at San Francisco, demonstrated that cancer genes can arise from normal cellular genes. His work has assumed special relevance to AIDS, through a focus on biochemical properties of HIV, and to breast cancer, through investigation of mammary tumors in mice.

Before taking his post at the NIH in 1993, Varmus was a professor of microbiology, biochemistry, and biophysics and the American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of California at San Francisco.

Varmus received his bachelor's degree in 1961 from Amherst College, his master's in English literature in 1962 from Harvard, and his M.D. in 1966 from Columbia University.

Among the honors Varmus has won are the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, the Armand Hammer Cancer Prize, and the American College of Physicians Award.

The author or editor of four books and over 300 scientific papers, Varmus has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Speakers at Harvard's Commencement Exercises traditionally address the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

The meeting is held on the afternoon of Commencement Day, following the Morning Exercises, during which degrees are awarded.

Recent Commencement speakers include Václav Havel, president of the Czech Republic (1995); Vice President Al Gore (1994); Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1993); Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway (1992); Eduard Shevardnadze (1991); Helmut Kohl, chancellor of West Germany (1990); and Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan (1989).