The founder of angiogenesis research, Judah Folkman died last night, apparently of a heart attack, according to the Boston Globe today. He was 74. He was the head of the vascular biology program at Children’s Hospital.
His work, showing that tumor growth is driven by its blood supply, touched off the development of cancer drugs that cut off tumor blood supply.
WBUR has a nice write-up of his life and achievements (correction/clarification: the write-up is from Children’s Hospital). I’ll update with links to obituaries as they come out.
I never met Dr. Folkman, but did see him give a talk once a few years ago to a very full room. If you knew him or worked with him, and if you care to, please post a comment here. What was he like?
Update (Jan 15): Stories are beginning to come out. This APHRoiZBgyOQy9mEKBZFolekAD8U6GI0O0 story and this blog post from the Scientist talk about how upset Folkman was when a NY Times article quoted Jim Watson saying that Folkman would ‘cure cancer’ in two years._
Update 2 (Jan. 16): The Globe today has a nice obituaryfolkman_cancers_innovative_enemy_dies_at_74/ of Dr. Folkman, describing him not only as a pioneering scientist who persisently pursued his his ideas about how tumor growth could be choked off by shutting down the tumor’s blood supply…even in the face of skepticism and criticism from his colleagues at the time. The article also portrays him as a loving husband and father and a mentor who trained many of today’s leading researchers._
Update 3 (January 18): The author of the 2001 book, Dr. Folkman’s War, wrote an op-edopinion/oped/articles/2008/01/17/the_revolutionary_doctor/ in yesterday’s Globe, ending it by saying: “The Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm moved too slowly. It doesn’t give the cherished prize posthumously.”_
I never met Judah Folkman in person, but I was fortunate enough to listen to one of his talks. I was doing cancer research in Boston when his seminal paper on angiostatin was published in Cell in 1994.
I don’t know whether I should be more impressed by how he almost single-handedly created a major field in oncology. Or how he was persistent (and stubborn) enough to work on angiogenesis for more than 20 years before this concept was finally accepted by the scientific community.
The scientific community has lost one of their heroes.
It is always shocking when someone as vibrant as Dr. Folkman unexpectedly passes away. But if anyone led an accomplished and truly happy life, it was him. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to chat with him a couple of days earlier at a social event (where he danced half the night away with his lovely wife!), and as always, he never stopped thinking about how to answer that next burning scientific problem. He was the consummate physician-scientist, and an inspiration to all of us who knew him.
If you are ever in need of a good dose of scientific inspiration, I highly recommend Robert Cooke’s excellent biography “Dr. Folkman’s WAR”. It is one of the best general audience history of science books I have read. Even if you think you know the story, the stories behind the story are even more remarkable.