J.L. Cereijido/EPA/Corbis

Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Director, Vascular Biology Program, Children's Hopsital, Boston
Location Boston, MA
Age 73
HMS M.D. 1957

Thirty years ago the scientific establishment mocked his hypothesis that cancer’s growth could be checked by cutting off its blood supply. Today that theory, anti-angiogenesis, is evolving into a major weapon in the war on cancer. The first drug to reach the market, Avastin, has prolonged thousands of lives; others in the pipeline promise to save thousands more. Folkman is still driving the field toward its next breakthroughs; NPR’s The Connection called him “many people’s odds-on favorite in the race to cure cancer.” Though he suffered a setback when his own drug, endostatin, yielded disappointing results in U.S. trials, a Chinese company recently revived a version of the treatment. The son of a rabbi, Folkman feared telling his father that he wanted to pursue medicine over the clergy. But the rabbi gave his blessing, noting the role of ministering in medicine: “You can be a rabbi-like doctor.”

However… It’s been eight years since Nobel laureate James Watson predicted, in the New York Times, that Folkman’s work would cure cancer within two years.

Google hits 103,000 for “Judah Folkman”; 311,000 for “angiogenesis inhibitors”