Epidemiologist E. Cuyler Hammond Dies

E. Cuyler Hammond, the epidemiologist whose research was among the first to link smoking to cancer and heart disease, has died of lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was 74.

Hammond, a former smoker who also discovered a connection between asbestos and cancer, died Monday at his home, the American Cancer Society announced.

In 1952 Hammond, who worked for the American Cancer Society for 31 years, published the first results of a study of 188,000 men that showed cigarette smokers had a higher risk from all causes of death, particularly from lung cancer and heart disease.

Cigarette consumption fell in 1954 as awareness of links between smoking and cancer grew, the American Cancer Society reported.

Hammond himself smoked four packs a day until 1952, when his own work convinced him of the hazards of tobacco, the Cancer Society said.

His later research established a link between cigarette smoking and cancers of organs other than the lungs, the relationship of cigarette smoking and cancer in women and the decreased risk in former smokers.

Hammond attended Yale University, where he began as a physics major then switched to biology. After graduation he went to work for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and during World War II worked as a health analyst and statistician for the Army and Air Force.

He joined the American Cancer Society in 1946 and continued to work there as the society’s chief of epidemiology and statistics until his retirement in 1977.