Francis Peyton Rous (1879-1970), American pathologist and Nobel Laureate. Rous contracted tuberculosis whilst a 2nd-year medical student. After surgery, he spent a year as a cowboy before returning to his studies and graduating in 1905. He spent his whole career at the Rockefeller Institute in New York researching the pathenogenesis of cancer. By the mid-1930s he had shown that many types of animal cancer were viral in origin. He later proposed that cancer formation typically involved two processes, initiation and promotion, which may require different agents. He shared the 1966 Nobel Prize for his work, and remained an active researcher until the age of 90.