Aldred Scott Warthin

Born in Greensburg, Indiana, in 1866, he became an American pathologist whose work helped lay the groundwork for understanding hereditary cancer. He studied at Indiana University and then at the University of Michigan, where he earned advanced degrees in medicine and pathology and built the institution that would define most of his career.

At Michigan, he served as a teacher, researcher, and later director of the pathology laboratories. He is especially remembered for studying a family with an unusually heavy burden of cancer, work that is often seen as an early milestone in cancer genetics. His name also lives on in medical history through Warthin tumor, a benign salivary gland tumor associated with his research.

Contemporary and later accounts describe him as a gifted lecturer as well as a prolific scholar. He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1931, after a career that left a lasting mark on pathology and the study of inherited disease.