Charles Brenton Huggins was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1901. He died in Chicago, Illinois in 1997. He received his undergraduate education from Acadia University where he graduated in 1920. He received his M.D. degree in 1924 from Harvard University after which he trained in surgery at the University of Michigan. He later became director of the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago from which he retired in 1969. Huggins was the first physician to use a chemical substance in the treatment of cancer and thus was the father of chemotherapy.

Huggins is remembered for his innovative treatment of prostate cancer and other malignancies that respond to hormone therapy. Prostate cancer is the most common internal cancer in the United States accounting for more than 40% of new cancer cases in men. African American males have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world. Prostate...