1901-1997

American Surgeon

Charles B. Huggins won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1966 for his discovery, made three decades earlier, of the relation between hormones and prostate and breast cancer. His research yielded a number of valuable ideas and techniques, most notably hormone therapy, the first nontoxic and nonradioactive chemical treatment for cancer.

Charles B. Huggins. (The Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)

Born on September 22, 1901, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Huggins was the elder of two sons born to pharmacist Charles Edward Huggins and wife Bessie Spencer Huggins. In 1920 Huggins earned his B.A. degree from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, graduating in a class of just 25 students. Later that year he entered Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1924 with both M.A. and an M.D. degrees. Huggins spent his internship at the University of Michigan Hospital, and...