The oncologist, who passed away at the age of 93, marked his specialty with his work in radiology and biology. And will remain one of the first tobacco fighters.
A great figure in French oncology has just died. Professor Maurice Tubiana passed away on Tuesday in Paris at the age of 93. With some other great figures in the discipline, he laid the scientific foundations of oncology both in the field of breast cancer screening and adjuvant treatments. He is at the origin of the use of radioactive isotopes in medicine and remains one of the pioneers in the development of radiotherapy.
Science and medicine have also marked out his learning and professional career. After secondary studies at Algiers high school, he turned to medical studies with the regret of not having made a preparatory scientific class. “I flipped a coin and fell into medicine,” he later commented. Still a student, he joined the Free French Forces in 1943.
His medical degree and his doctorate in physics in hand, he flew to the United States a few years later and studied biophysics at Berkeley.
Biology, scientific rigor and clinical intuition, the young intern is learning his profession. “My whole career has been conditioned by these 18 months spent in the United States”.
A career that he will start at the Gustave Roussy Institute to ensure its direction from 1982 to 1988. President of the Academy of Medicine (2002), member of many learned societies, author of hundreds of publications, expert with WHO, Maurice Tubiana understood before the time of the day the need to fight cancer with the weapons of prevention and information. In Lyon, in the city of his medical studies, he participated in the creation of the International Center for Research on Cancer (Circ). With his essays, Light in the shadows or The Well-Aging, the doctor tries to share with the general public the great advances in medicine but also his fears.
Because of Maurice Tubiana, history will remember that he was one of the first tobacco fighters. Others will keep the image of a man who resisted until the end: “You get old, when you think you’re old,” he said again in 2003.
.
