John Cairns

Who is John Cairns?

John Forster Cairns FRS is a British physician and molecular biologist who made significant contributions to molecular genetics, cancer research, and public health.

Cairns received his M.D. from Oxford. He then worked as a virologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia and at the Virus Research Institute at Entebbe, Uganda. He returned to Australia to work at in the School of Microbiology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. Cairns took a sabbatical to research at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1960 and 1961, and returned there to serve as the director from 1963 to 1968. He remained a staff member at Cold Spring Harbor until 1972, when he was appointed head of the Mill Hill Laboratory of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. After leaving Mill Hill in 1980 he took up a professorship at the Harvard School of Public Health. He retired in 1991.