Francis Peyton Rous

Francis Peyton Rous ( October 5, 1879 in Baltimore, † February 16, 1970 in New York) was an American pathologist and Nobel laureate.

Life

Rous came from his father's side of the English Einwandereren; his mother came from a family with hugenottischem background. His father died early, so that Peyton and his two siblings were raised by the mother alone. The mother was very keen on a good education for their children. Rous studied at Johns Hopkins University Medical and acquired in 1900 the degree of BA.

In 1900 there was a serious accident, when Rous accidentally cut in the section of a tuberculous body in the finger. There was a local tuberculous infection, which later spread to the regional lymph nodes. The swollen lymph nodes were surgically removed and it was granted him that there was nothing more to do for him now, because at the time there was no effective antibiotic treatment possibility of tuberculosis and had this disease the most common causes of death. Rous interrupted his training and went for a year to Texas, where he worked on the land and was recovering from tuberculosis again.

In 1905 he completed his studies in Baltimore and then began training as a pathologist at the University of Michigan. Since his salary was measured as an assistant very sparse, it was generous of the Director of the Institute Aldred Scott Warthin (1866-1931) financially supported. To educate medical Rous spent a year in Dresden in 1907, as the German medicine at that time enjoyed an excellent reputation worldwide. After his return he obtained a position at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research where he specialized in tumor medicine.

He undertook experiments with tumors in chickens. With an ultrafiltrate of a muscle tumor of a chicken Rous in 1911 could again cause cancer by injection into other chickens. The pathogen could not be a conventional bacteria, as this fine filter could not have happened. He suspected in this extract a virus, although at that time only very vague ideas about viruses were present ( the electron was only 20 years later invented the modern methods of molecular biology developed only after the Second World War). Later this tumor virus Rous sarcoma virus named (RSV ) to it. 1966, more than 50 years after its discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine " for his discoveries in the field of tumorigenic viruses ". In the same year he had already been awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, 1955, he had received the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, 1958 Albert Lasker Award for Basic to Medical Research.