Harold Varmus

From www​.columbia​.edu

Harold Varmus (1939– )

A virologist who, working with Michael Bishop at UCSF, discovered that homologues of the src gene were present in all cells.  Bishop and Varmus would thus advance the hypothesis that viral cancer-​​causing genes (viral oncogenes) were, in fact, derived from precursor genes (proto-​​oncogenes) present in all cells.