Maurice Tubiana
Biography
Maurice Tubiana was born in 1920 in Constantine (Algeria). While a medical student he
fought in the second World War and was wounded in 1944 while landing with the Allied
forces in Southern France. He obtained a medical degree in 1945 and a doctorate in Physics
in 1947, in Paris. He trained in physics with Frédéric Joliot-Curie and with John D.
Lawrence at Berkeley. Professor of Medical physics since 1952, from 1963 to 1989 he is
professor of Experimental and clinical radiotherapy at Paris Medical School. As one of the
world’s leading experts in radiobiology, in France he pioneered the use of
radioactive isotopes in biology and medicine, and the development of modern radiotherapy
and radioprotection.
He has published over 300 scientific papers and several books, among which Introduction
to Radiobiology, probably the textbook most familiar to medical students in the United
States and in Europe. First as the head of the department of Radiology and later as
director of a large cancer institute (Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif), he became an
advocate of multidisciplinary team work, and thereby of prevention.
He was appointed expert consultant of the World Health Organization (WHO) and of the
International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAAE) in 1995; he was a member of the scientific
committee of WHO, president of the scientific committees of IAAE and of the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, of the board of which he is currently a member. He chaired
the Committee of cancer experts of the European Union from 1986 to 1994.
Maurice Tubiana, who is keenly aware of the public need for sound information, has written
several essays for the lay reader: Le refus du réel (Laffont, Paris, 1977), La
lumière dans l’ombre. Le cancer aujourd’hui et demain (Odile Jacob, Paris
1991) and Les chemins d’Esculape. Histoire de la pensée médicale
(Flammarion, Paris 1995) awarded the Académie Française Prize in 1996.
He is a member of the French Academies of Science and Medicine and has received several of
the highest awards for medicine and for oncology, such as the Roentgen Medal of the
Accademia dei Lincei in 1986, the Pezcoller Prize and the Janeway Medal of the American
Radium Society in 1991.
Also:
His many scientific publications, which cover a wide range of clinical and basic research topics, from radiation physics and nuclear medicine to radiobiology and radiotherapy, include many pioneering and visionary articles on nuclear medicine and high energy radiotherapy. Professor Tubiana was, most probably, the first to describe a manual scanner for the distribution of radio-iodine in the neck: He has devoted several pioneering studies to the digitalisation and computerisation of scanner images.
Professor Tubiana and his fellow workers at the new French School of Radiotherapy
turned thorough understanding of physical and biological mechanisms and clinical
experience into fundamental results which contributed a great deal to the quick upswing of
modern radiotherapy in the fifties and sixties in continental Europe.
On the clinical side, Professor Tubiana has concentrated on lymphoma and thyroid cancer,
has defined in detail the function of radiotherapy for Hodgkin's disease and the
non-Hodgkin lymphoma. His knowledge of the biology of tumors enabled him, in cooperation
with others, to establish indications for a combined therapy with radio-iodine and
external radiation, and to show, together with Gérard Milhaud, that medullary thyroid
carcinoma secretes thyrocalcitonin, a hormone that could perhaps be used as a marker for
this type of cancer.
His most prominent basic research has centered around kinetics of cell proliferation, duration of the cell cycle in solid human tumors, and proliferation mechanisms of hematopoietic tissues. The result of these studies led to the hypothesis in 1966 that occult metastases already exist at the stage of initial cancer treatment, and are thus not caused by dissemination on account of surgical interventions.