John Heller, 84; Cancer Specialist
Dr. John Roderick Heller Jr., former director of the National Cancer Institute and a former president of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, died Thursday at Suburban Hospital outside Washington after a stroke. He was 84.
A specialist in cancer research, he directed the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health from 1948 to 1960. He then became president and chief executive officer of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering center.
Heller received the Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Foundation’s first annual World Peace Through World Health Award from President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
He retired to Bethesda in 1965 and worked as a consultant to the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.
Heller was born in Fair Play, S.C. He graduated from Clemson College in 1925 and from Emory University Medical School in 1929. He worked for the U.S. Public Health Service in Little Rock, Brunswick, Ga., Nashville, Tuskegee, Ala., Boston and Harrisburg, Pa..
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
