Arnold Graffi

Arnold Graffi (19 June 1910 to 30 January 2006) was a German physician who became a pioneer of experimental cancer research and was the first to identify viruses that induce tumours. Born in the Saxon town of Bistritz in Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he studied medicine at Marburg, Leipzig and Tübingen and took his doctorate at the Charité in Berlin, where the influence of Albert Dietrich turned him toward cancer. He worked on cell culture and hormone research, then under Richard Otto at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Frankfurt, and from 1949 he taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming a professor in 1951 and retiring in 1975 as director of the Institute of Cancer Research. By tracing the fluorescent carcinogen benz-pyrene through the skin cells of mice he saw it gather around the mitochondria, which suggested that mutations of cell organelles might lead to cancer. In 1954 he discovered the tumour-inducing retrovirus now called the Graffi murine leukemia virus, and in 1967 a hamster polyoma virus. With Heinz Bielka he wrote the textbook Probleme der Experimentellen Krebsforschung (1959). He also painted watercolour landscapes and composed music.