Judah Folkman

Founded the field of angiogenesis research, proposing and then proving that tumors actively recruit new blood vessels to feed themselves — an idea dismissed by much of the scientific establishment when he first advanced it in the early 1970s. The theory eventually opened an entirely new category of cancer treatment, drugs that work by cutting off a tumor's blood supply rather than attacking the tumor cells directly, and Folkman spent his career as both a laboratory researcher and a practicing pediatric surgeon.