Joseph Holland Burchenal ’34

Joe Burchenal, whose pioneering work with drug treatments for leukemia and other forms of cancer earned him, in 1964, one of the first three of our Awards for Outstanding Achievement, died March 8, 2006, at age 93. (The other two winners were Butch Fisher and Johnny Oakes.)

According to a two-column obituary in The New York Times, Joe "arrived at what is now the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the late 1940s, when the primary therapies for cancer were surgery and radiation. In the 1950s, he and others experimented with pharmaceutical solutions and used them in path-breaking trials."

Before retiring in 1983, Joe became vice president of Sloan-Kettering Institute and head of its applied-therapy laboratory. He was also a professor of medicine at Cornell.

Surviving are Joe's wife of 58 years, Joan Riley Burchenal; three sons, Caleb W., David H., and J.E.B. '84; three daughters, Holly Nottebohm, Jody Nycum, and Bobbie Landers; a sister, Betty Maxfield; 16 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

The Class of 1934