Cornelius P. Rhoads

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Cornelius Rhoads and Dorothy Shaver (Hulton Archive/Getty)

Cornelius Rhoads was a controversial cancer researcher whose career was marred by a racist letter.

Cornelius Packard "Dusty" Rhoads (June 9, 1898–August 13, 1959) was born and raised in Springfield, Mass. He obtained his medical degree from Harvard in 1924 and taught there until he joined the Rockefeller Institute, under whose auspices he went to Puerto Rico in 1931 to study anemia. Rhoads' tenure there was cut short by the discovery of an unsent, racist letter to a colleague, and he left for New York that same year, where he pioneered studies in chemotherapy. In 1945 he became the first director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and later was scientific director for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center until his death in 1959. In 2003 the American Association for Cancer Research renamed its annual Cornelius P. Rhoads Award, which had been given since 1979.