Lacassagne, Antoine Marcellin Bernard

Born Aug. 29,1884, in Villrest, Loire Department; died Dec. 16,1971, in Paris. French radiologist. Member of the National Academy of Medicine (1948), the Academy of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (1949), and the Academy of Surgery (1950). Doctor of medicine (1913).

Lacassagne graduated from the faculty of medicine of the University of Lyon in 1902. From 1937 to 1955 he was chief of the laboratory of the Radium Institute of the University of Paris and (from 1941) professor of experimental radiology at the Collège de France.

Lacassagne’s principal works were devoted to the origin of malignant tumors under the influence of various physical and chemical factors on the body (estrogenic hormones, carcinogenic chemicals, ionizing radiation). In collaboration with F. Joliot-Curie, he found that he was able to produce cancer of the liver in a rabbit after irradiation with neutrons and tumors of the mammary glands in mice after injection with folliculin. He studied the carcinogenic effects of ultraviolet and X rays and of α-, β-, and γ-radiation. In 1925 (in collaboration with P. Emile-Weil), he gave an analysis of the origin of pernicious anemia and myeloid leukemia in persons working with radioactive substances. Many of Lacassagne’s works were devoted to the study of the biological effects of ionizing radiation. Lacassagne became a foreign member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1962.