IN THE highly charged realms of toxicology and environmental epidemiology, every generation seems to produce its own Wilhelm Hueper. He was a doctor who migrated to the US from Germany, having served in the first world war. His pioneering research into the connection between industrial chemicals and diseases such as cancer led to his 1942 textbook, Occupational Tumors and Allied Diseases – the first attempt to consolidate medical knowledge of workplace diseases into a single volume.
Hueper went on to become the first head of the environmental cancer section of the National Cancer Institute, and in 1962 he received the ultimate…
