Wynder, Ernest L (32926486)

Ernest L Wynder
Personal details
Birth name	Ernst Ludwig Wynder
Born	30 April 1922 Herford, Westphalia
Died	14 July 1999 Manhattan, New York, US
Nativity	Germany
Religion	Jewish
Known for	Linking smoking with lung cancer
Awards	Robert Koch Prize (gold, 1990)
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	32926486
Enlisted	Newark, New Jersey

Awards and honors

• Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 1990)

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Ernest L. Wynder (30 April 1922 – 14 July 1999), born Ernst Ludwig Wynder in Herford, Germany, was a Jewish Ritchie Boy and later an American epidemiologist and public-health researcher. With Evarts A. Graham he published the landmark 1950 Journal of the American Medical Association study that helped identify smoking as a contributory cause of lung cancer—work that shaped decades of cancer prevention research.

Biography

Ernst Ludwig Wynder was born on 30 April 1922 in Herford, Westphalia, to Jewish parents. In 1938 his family fled Nazi Germany for the United States, where he enrolled at New York University. Roster and enlistment records list him as Ernest L Wynder (ASN 32926486), a German-born Jewish trainee associated with Camp Ritchie; he enlisted from Newark, New Jersey, with four years of college noted on the service record.

During the Second World War he became a U.S. citizen and served in the Army as a German speaker. Wikipedia records that he was assigned to psychological warfare work monitoring German newscasts. He also appears in a wartime group photograph of Ritchie Boys preserved in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Joseph Eaton collection) and shared on the Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page—standing among fellow trainees including Konrad Kellen, Stefan Heym, Louis Atlas, Peter Weidenreich (later Wyden), and Joseph Eaton (see gallery caption for the full identification).

After the war Wynder studied medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving both a Bachelor of Science and an M.D. in 1950. As a medical student he began the epidemiological work that made his scientific reputation. With thoracic surgeon Evarts A. Graham he published the landmark 1950 Journal of the American Medical Association study "Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma," one of the first major scientific papers to identify smoking as a contributory cause of lung cancer. Follow-up laboratory work with Graham showed that cigarette tar could produce cancers in mice and helped identify carcinogens in tobacco smoke.

Wynder spent the 1950s and 1960s at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, published hundreds of papers on cancer epidemiology (including lung, breast, and many other sites), founded the American Health Foundation in 1969, and in 1972 founded the journal Preventive Medicine, which he edited. He received the Robert Koch Prize (Gold) in 1990. He died of thyroid cancer in Manhattan on 14 July 1999.

Research notes

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Wynder

Gallery

• 
  All the men identified in the pix are "Ritchie Boys." Seated - Hans Habe. Standing L-R - Unknown, Ernest Wynder, Konrad Kellen, unknown, Stefan Heym, Louis Atlas, Peter Weidenreich (last name later changed to Wyden), unknown, Joseph Eaton

Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	77
Nara ASN	32926486
Nara Name	WYNDER ERNEST
Nara State	22
Nara County	13
Nara POE	2252
Nara DOE	70643
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	NO
Nara Branch Code	2
Branch	No branch assignment
Nara Term or Enlistment	5
Term of enlistment	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	N1
Nara Year of Birth	22
Nara Race	J
Nara Race Description	White not yet a citizen
Nara Education	8
Nara Civilian Occupation	992
Nara Marital Status	6
Nara Height (inches)	43
Nara Weight (lbs)	444
row_source	demographics

Sources

• Camp Ritchie class roster (classes 1–31), merged research file
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2021-08-11 (1 post)
• Wikipedia: Ernst Wynder