German Society Salutes ‘Big Four’ for Pioneering Work in Women’s Health Care

By The ASCO Post Staff
October 25, 2016

Diethelm Wallwiener, MD, President of the German Society for Gynaecology and Obstetrics, announced “The Big Four of the Millennium” at the 61st Congress of the Society, held recently in Stuttgart, Germany. The award recognizes individuals’ whose work in the 20th century created the standards of women’s health care in the 21st century. The four recipients of this honor are:

• Harald zur Hausen, MD, a German virologist. From 1983 until 2003, he served as Chairman and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University. In 2008, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the role of papillomaviruses in cancer of the cervix.
• V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, Dallas/Ft. Worth Living Legend Chair of Cancer Research in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is known as the “Father of Tamoxifen” for his seminal translational research that created the clinical strategies of long-term adjuvant tamoxifen therapy and chemoprevention for treating and preventing breast cancer. 
• Umberto Veronesi, MD, Knight Grand Cross, OMRI, known by many as “the most famous doctor in ­Italy.” Trained as a surgical oncologist, he pioneered breast-conserving surgery and founded the European Institute of Oncology.
• Hans-Jörg Senn, MD, founder of the St. Gallen Breast Cancer conferences. Born in Switzerland, he chose to train in the United States to learn the newest advances in chemotherapy, which he brought back to Switzerland to aid patients. ■

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