Frank Lappin Horsfall

Frank Lappin Horsfall received his B.A. from the University of Washington in 1927 and graduated MD from McGill University in 1932. He then spent a year as a pathologist at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, then spent another resident year at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital and Montreal General Hospital. However, due to a hypersensitivity to formaldehyde, in 1934 he moved to New York to join he pneumonia service of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1937 he began a four-year term with the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. Here he began his important studies on viruses and the diseases they cause, his most important work being on the human influenza virus and the pneumonia virus of mice.

In 1942 Horsfall returned to the Rockefeller Hospital, where he became Vice President for Clinical Studies and Physician in Chief. During World War II, he served in the Naval reserves as part of the Naval Medical Research Unit at the Rockefeller Hospital.

In 1960 Horsfall left the Rockefeller Hospital to become professor of microbiology and Director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center at the Cornell University. Much of his work here concerned the role of chemical carcinogens.