The cancer researcher and medicine Nobel Prize winner Harald zur Hausen is dead. He died on Sunday at the age of 87, as announced by the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. “With him we are losing an outstanding scientist who has made groundbreaking achievements in the field of tumor virology,” said Michael Baumann, Chairman and Scientific Director of the DKFZ.
Zur Hausen headed the renowned research facility for 20 years. The internationally known virologist was considered the spiritual father of a widely used vaccine against cervical cancer and other tumors, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008. “It’s no exaggeration to say that Harald zur Hausen has opened up a whole new dimension in cancer prevention,” says Baumann. Zur Hausen continued to work until the very end, and in recent years he was interested in researching a possible connection between milk and beef consumption and the development of breast and colon cancer.
Zur Hausen was born on March 11, 1936 in Gelsenkirchen. He studied medicine in Bonn, Hamburg and Düsseldorf. In the early 1980s, he provided evidence that certain sexually transmitted skin wart viruses – so-called human papilloma viruses (HPV) – can trigger cervical cancer. In doing so, he created the conditions for the development of a vaccine that has been approved for the European market since 2006. Initially, there was great skepticism among colleagues, as zur Hausen once said.
“The fact that papilloma viruses had something to do with cancer was initially considered almost an obscure science,” says Hans-Georg Krausslich, who worked at the DKFZ in zur Hausen and is now director of virology at Heidelberg University Hospital. “The research was almost ridiculed.” Nonetheless, academically, zur Hausen was “always extremely successful,” according to Krausslich, and he always published at a high level. “He just wasn’t the type to let outside skepticism get in the way.”
“Then he looked at the name tag and summoned the doctoral student to the board office.”
According to Krausslich, the qualified doctor was not just an “extraordinary scientist personality”. “He has combined his outstanding scientific life’s work with an enormous ability to think ahead and change scientific structures and scientific developments.” During the Hausen period, the DKFZ had developed into one of the world‘s leading research centers in the field of cancer medicine, agrees Peter Krammer, who was director of the Institute for Immunology and Genetics at the DKFZ until his retirement.
For example, zur Hausen introduced external assessments early on in order to improve the international reputation of the DKFZ. At the beginning of his management activity, the institute was notorious as a workplace for “mouse doctors” whose research could only help mice and not humans. Hans-Georg Kräusslich says that zur Hausen always gave young scientists autonomy at an early stage and allowed them to pursue their own scientific goals – an extremely progressive attitude at the time. At that time, young people at the beginning of their careers mainly had to assist older ones.
At the same time, Harald zur Hausen had great authority even before the Nobel Prize was awarded. When the DKFZ employees knew that “Zett-Ha” was around the house, they all put on a clean overall and buttoned it up to the top, as is proper, Krausslich recalls. Once zur Hausen found a dirty coat in a cloakroom in one of the corridors. “Then he looked at the name tag and summoned the doctoral student to the board office,” says Krausslich. Such anecdotes also contributed to the fact that there was an “almost hymn-like reverence” for zur Hausen at the DKFZ.
Zur Hausen’s inflexibility – others called it Westphalian stubbornness – is also made clear in the eulogy that the then Federal President Horst Köhler gave to the researcher in 2009 when he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit: “You went your own way with perseverance, made yourself independent of scientific dogmas and of extra-scientific interests.” Zur Hausen gave young scientists the following advice: “Basically, you have to assume that most of the hypotheses that you make and that you work on for a long time will turn out to be wrong. You then have to correct them – and keep working .” You have to have a certain willingness to be frustrated, perhaps even more so in science than in other areas.
In 1983 zur Hausen was appointed head of the DKFZ. His primary interest has always been the role of viral infections in the development of cancer. He still came to his laboratory at the DKFZ into old age and researched pathogens that could be associated with the development of breast and colon cancer. In the course of his research career, zur Hausen was honored with an impressive number of academic awards.
He was the recipient of almost 40 honorary doctorates and numerous honorary professorships. The culmination of his scientific career came in 2008 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In 2009, zur Hausen received the large Federal Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic. In 2017, the city of Heidelberg made him an honorary citizen.
With material from dpa.