Varmus to present first Temin lecture

Nobel Prize winner Harold M. Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health and current president and chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, will give the first Howard M. Temin Lecture, Wednesday, May 1 at 2 p.m. in 272 Bascom Hall.

The lecture is the latest of several ways in which the UW–Madison community honors Temin’s life and work. Each year thousands of people are reminded of him as they take the Lakeshore Path that bears his name. Temin himself bicycled or walked the trail almost every day on his way to work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, now part of the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center. At the lab, and perhaps along the path, he developed the radical ideas on how genetic information flows in cells that won him, with David Baltimore and Renato Dulbecco, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975.

Temin, who died in 1994 after 34 years as a McArdle faculty member, has also been memorialized with the Howard M. Temin Professorship in Cancer Research, which was created in 1997. John A. T. Young, whose anthrax research is capturing global attention, holds the professorship. In addition to being UW–Madison’s most distinguished scientist, Temin was a dedicated mentor and teacher. He was instrumental in establishing the university’s strong virology program, and always encouraged graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to participate in it.

Students spearheaded the initiation of the Temin lectureship. The McArdle graduate student organization, called the Data Club, chose Varmus and invited him to present the first lecture. Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work on the genetic basis of cancer, was also a friend of Temin’s.

As a prelude to the lecture, McArdle associate director Bill Sugden will discuss Temin’s research at noon Tuesday, April 30, 125 McArdle Laboratory, 1400 University Ave.