Sidney Farber (1903–1973) was a pediatric pathologist. He was born in 1903 in Buffalo, New York, the third oldest of a family of 14 children. He was a graduate of the University of Buffalo in 1923. He took his first year of medical school at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg in Germany. He entered Harvard Medical School as a second-year student and graduated in 1927.[1] He was married to Norma C. Farber (formerly Holzman), a children's author. He was the brother of the noted philosopher and UB professor, Marvin Farber (1901–1980).
After graduate training in pathology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (the predecessor of Brigham and Women's Hospital) in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was mentored by Kenneth Blackfan, Farber was appointed to a resident pathologist post at Children's Hospital. He became an assistant in pathology at Harvard Medical School in 1928. In 1929, he became the first full-time pathologist to be based at Children's Hospital.[1]
While working at Harvard Medical School on a research project funded by a grant from the American Cancer Society, he carried out both the preclinical and clinical evaluation of aminopterin (synthesized in consultation with Farber by Yellapragada Subbarao), a folate antagonist in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He showed for the first time that induction of clinical and hematological remission in this disease was achievable.[1] These findings promoted Farber as the "father" of the modern era of chemotherapy for neoplastic disease, having already been recognized for a decade as the "father" of modern pediatric pathology.[2]
Farber began raising funds for cancer research with the Variety Club of New England in 1947. Together they created The Jimmy Fund, which was one of the first nationwide fundraising efforts to take full advantage of modern media, such as a broadcast of the radio show Truth or Consequences on 22 May 1948. The success of the Jimmy Fund led Farber to realize the importance of marketing in the scientific advancement of knowledge about diseases. According to Siddhartha Mukherjee, this realization
...set off a seismic transformation in [Farber's] career that would far outstrip his transformation from a pathologist to a leukemia doctor. This second transformation — from a clinician into an advocate for cancer research — reflected the transformation of cancer itself. The emergence of cancer from its basement into the glaring light of publicity would change the trajectory of [the story of cancer research in the 20th century].[1]
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is partly named after him. Farber Hall, built in 1953 on the South Campus of the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York is named for him.