Arthur Furst American Chemical Society Diamond Jubilee Stamps and Postal Cover Collection

Born on December 25, 1914 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Arthur Furst was an American toxicologist and cancer researcher. An orphan by the age of four, Furst moved to California where he earned his Associate in Arts degree in psychology at the City College of Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter he transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry in 1937, followed by his Master of Arts degree in chemistry with minors in mathematics and education in 1940.

Furst then took a teaching position at the San Francisco City College, where he taught chemistry for seven years before accepting a full-time Assistant Professorship at the University of South Florida in 1947. Shortly after receiving his Ph. D. in chemistry from Stanford University in 1948, Furst left the University of South Florida to join the cancer research group at the Stanford University Medical School, where he served as Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics starting in 1952. Involved in the creation of the Cancer Chemotherapy Laboratory at the Stanford Medical School, Furst’s work and research led to the implementation of a technique that utilized multiple cancer chemotherapy agents in concert, creating a mixture of specific chemotherapeutic agents used to fight cancer and overcome the problem of resistance specific to the disease. Furst was made a full professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Stanford University in 1957. He contributed over 300 articles to professional and scholarly journals, and was an active member of the American Chemical Society.

Arthur Furst passed away on December 1, 2005. Sources

Arthur Furst American Chemical Society Diamond Jubilee Stamps and Postal Cover Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.