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Ernest L Wynder

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Ernest L Wynder
Personal details
Birth nameErnst Ludwig Wynder
Born30 April 1922
Herford, Westphalia
Died14 July 1999
Manhattan, New York, US
NativityGermany
ReligionJewish
Known forLinking smoking with lung cancer
AwardsRobert Koch Prize (gold, 1990)
Military service
Allegiance United States
Branch United States Army
ASN32926486
EnlistedNewark, New Jersey
Awards and honors
  • Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 1990)
Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.
Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.


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 (30 April 1922 – 14 July 1999), known as Ernest L. Wynder, was born in Herford, Westphalia, to Jewish parents. In 1938 his family fled Nazi Germany for the United States, where he enrolled at New York University. He trained at Camp Ritchie and served in the Army as a German speaker, including psychological warfare work monitoring German newscasts. He appears in a wartime group photograph of Ritchie Boys at Camp Ritchie with Konrad Kellen, Stefan Heym, Louis Atlas, Peter Weidenreich, and Joseph Eaton (see gallery caption).

After the war Wynder studied medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving both a Bachelor of Science and an M.D. in 1950. 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 papers linking smoking to lung cancer. Follow-up laboratory work showed that cigarette tar could produce cancers in mice.

Wynder spent the 1950s and 1960s at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, published hundreds of papers on cancer epidemiology, founded the American Health Foundation in 1969, and in 1972 founded the journal Preventive Medicine. He received the Robert Koch Prize (Gold) in 1990.

Research notes

Gallery

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