Janet RowleyNATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINECancer researcher Janet Rowley, who spent most of her career at the University of Chicago, where she earned her MD in 1948 at the age of 23, died on Tuesday (December 17) in her home in the Hyde Park neighborhood just south of the city. Widely decorated for her contributions in oncology and genetics, Rowley continued to work until just a few months ago, even riding her bike to campus, The Washington Post reported.
The cause of Rowley’s death was ovarian cancer complications, according to a university statement. She was 88.
“Janet Rowley’s work established that cancer is a genetic disease,” Mary-Claire King, professor of medical genetics at the University of Washington and president of the American Society of Human Genetics, told UChicago News. “She demonstrated that mutations in critical genes lead to specific forms of leukemia and lymphoma, and that one can determine the form of cancer present in a patient directly from the genetic changes in the cancer. We are still working from her paradigm.”
Rowley was 15 when she earned a scholarship to an accelerated educational program at the University of Chicago. When she entered the university’s med school, she was one of just three women ...
