Two Physicians Awarded Prize for Cancer Research

The $100,000 Hammer Prize for cancer research will be awarded to Dr. Vincent T. DeVita Jr., former director of the National Cancer Institute, and Dr. Emil Frei III of Harvard University.

The recipients of the 1989 prize were announced in Los Angeles this week by Armand Hammer, chairman and chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Hammer, a longtime patron of cancer research, said DeVita was getting the award for pioneering work in developing combinations of chemotherapy drugs to safely treat and cure cancer, particularly Hodgkin’s disease. Frei was cited for developing combinations for chemotherapy drugs to treat leukemia, and for helping show how such drug combinations work.