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Volume XCIII, Number 7
University of Southern California
Wednesday, January 19, 1983
CHARLES HEIDELBERGER
Cancer researcher dies
By Mark Gill
Editor
Charles Heidelberger, an internationally renowned cancer researcher, died Tuesday in Pasadena after a long bout with cancer. He was 62.
Most recently director for basic research at the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, he became a distinguished professor (biochemistry and pathology), a title only one other faculty member in the school of medicine holds.
He was well known for work on chemotherapy and on chemical carcinogenesis, the process by which chemicals cause cancer. A medical school spokesperson called his dual interest, “quite rare for someone of his caliber.’’
In September of 1982, Heidelberger received the first $100,000 Athayde Prize, for the “most outstanding contribution to the fight against cancer.” A Brazilian land developer named Mucio Athayde had set aside $20 million, and a committee of scientists, physicians and lay people, who met in Geneva, chose Heidelberger to be the first recipient.
He could not attend the presentation because he was undergoing treatment- for cancer of the sinus (behind an eye). Scientists who were present noted the irony in that his relatively rare malignancy could have resulted from exposure to the powerful chemicals with which he worked.
Dr. Richard O’Brien, then director of the university Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that any reference to a direct link is purely speculative, noting that one in four people get cancer.
Heidelberger’s work with chemotherapy involved creating an artificial variant of uracil known as 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). In the 1950s, he found that rapidly growing cancer cells consume relatively large amounts of the natural chemical (uracil) and that the 5-FU would block their growth. This
was the first of several anti-cancer drugs developed in this way. It is still widely used, particularly in treating cancer of the stomach, colon and breast.
He was also credited with adding to the understanding of how carcinogenic chemicals cause normal cells to become cancerous.
This fall, he worked on what he called a rational approach to chemotherapy. Patients who suffered from recurrent cancer of the breast, stomach or colon were given 5-FU two to three hours before a small biopsy was taken. The eventual goal is to know if a patient will respond to a type of chemotherapy, without first having to administer it for months, as must be done now. He said at that point it would be two or three years before predictions could be made.
“It is unfortunate that he died at this time when he had so much of his productive life ahead of him,” said Dr. Robert Stellwagen, acting chairman of the department of biochemistry.
“Charles Heidelberger contributed enormously to the development of the basic science program of the (cancer center),” said Dr. Denman Hammond, now associate dean of the school of medicine. He was the cancer center’s founding director, and the one who recruited Heidelberger to the university.
“He joined us at a critical time, when the cancer center was just developing, and he attracted many bright, young scientists to the USC faculty.”
Hammond said Heidelberger demanded first-quality work, but also called him a humanist, “an accomplished violinist and trumpeter, who enjoyed playing his trumpet in impromptu jazz groups. He will be greatly missed as a scientist, a teacher and a colleague.”
Heidelberger came to the university in 1976, after 27 years at the University of Wisconsin. He also worked at UC
Berkeley and at Harvard, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees as well as a doctorate.
He was named a lifetime professor of the American Cancer Society in 1960 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978.
He is survived by his wife, Patricia, three children and his father. The funeral services will be private, and the family requests that, in lieu of sending flowers, contributions may be made to the Charles Heidelberger Memorial Fund at the USC Comprehensive Cancer Center, P.O. Box 33804, Los Angeles, CA, 90033-0804.
Educator speaks on El Salvador
By Belma Johnson
Investigations Editor
“There is no way that I can convey to an audience the experience of being in El Salvador,” said Amon Hadar at the off-campus Newman Center Tuesday night. Hadar recently returned to the United States after leading a delegation of American academicians to the civil war-wrought Central American country.
He and James Torrens spoke Tuesday at a press conference about their delegation’s visit to El Salvador from Jan. 5-12 to explore the conditions of human rights and higher education.
The eight-member delegation was the first foreign group allowed inside the national university since it came under military control, and the group was also allowed to visit the prisons unaccompanied by authorities, Hadar said.
“For instance, when we went to the largest jail of El Salvador (it holds 1,700 prisoners, he said) and when we talked to them (the prisoners) and you see the discipline of these prisoners and the courage of these prisoners and the torture that they went through . . .
“I would say 70 percent to 80 percent appear healthy, but as soon as they take off their clothes, you can see the scars (of torture.”
Hadar said news reports in the United States about improved prison conditions are often inaccurate.
“They go through hell. And that includes women; they go through the same hell. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks.”
Hadar founded the group, the Faculty for Human Rights in El Salvador and Central America, and also directs UC Berkeley’s US — El Salvador Information and Research Center.
One of the group’s Los Angeles-area coordinators is Nora Hamilton, a university assistant professor of political science.
She said she started a protest group in the spring of 1981 which merged with Hadar’s faculty committee that summer.
The delegation spent most of its seven days in the capital city of San Salvador.
They spoke to high officials in the current and former governments of El Salvador during the stay, he said.
Hadar said some of the officials denied the atrocities and others pointed to U.S. news reports that the killings and torture are diminishing.
Both men agreed that the delegation received hospitable treatment from government and military personnel.
“What we learned is definitely part of what’s going on in the whole country,” he said.
(Continued on page 11)
Biology program rated fair
By Douglas Lytle
Staff Writer
The biological science department received average to slightly above average ratings in a recently conducted study of over 600 doctoral programs in biological sciences published by a widely respected journal of educators.
The wide-ranging survey was based in part on questionnaires that were sent to various faculty members involved in biological science departments at major colleges and universities around the United States.
The study, prepared by the National Academy Press based in Washington, D.C., was essentially “part of an assessment of the quality of graduate education in the United States,” according to the journal.
The responses to the questionnaires, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, were then totaled and compiled with an average score of 50.
The university has in its curriculum four of the six fields of study that were rated in the survey: biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, microbiology and physiology'.
In the final survey, each of the departments received ratings that were slightly above and below the average of 50.
The department of biochemistry reported scores of 54, 51, 49 and 54 to the various questions of faculty quality, effectiveness of education, improvement and familiarity, respectively. Similar scores of 55, 48, 55 and 52
were reported in the department of microbiology
The other two departments reviewed also reported scores close to the national average.
Myron Goodman, a professor of biological sciences, said that “I think that we did better than I might have expected — aside from the obvious schools.”
He added that the university did not place as highly as such schools such as Stanford University, Harvard Univerity, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’ and UC Berkeley because those schools have superior faculty, international exposure and better facilities with which to work.
Goodman continued that although it might appear as if the university’s biological science departments were average when compared on a national basis, just the opposite is true.
“We’re not Stanford of course, but the fact that we placed ahead of some very well known schools in the United States is no , reason to be discouraged at all," he said, adding that the survey is a "pretty accurate reflection of reality,” and that the future of the biological sciences at the university looks “very promising."
The questionnaire asked the faculty members of the 616 colleges and universities surveyed to consider these factors:
—	The scholarly competence and achievements of faculty members in a stratified random sample of the departments in the respon-(Continued on page 11)