J Michael Bishop

Bishop, J. (John) Michael

(1936–  ) virologist; born in York, Pa. After his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (1962–64), he performed virology research at the National Institutes of Health (1964–68). He joined the University of California: San Francisco (1968), and became director of the G. W. Hooper Research Foundation (1981). He and colleague Harold E. Varmus received the 1989 Nobel Prize in physiology for their work, begun in the mid-1970s, which demonstrated that external agents, such as viruses or mutagens, may transform a cell's normal genes into cancer-generating oncogenes.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.