Peter Carey Nowell (February 8, 1928 – December 26, 2016) was a cancer researcher and co-discoverer of the Philadelphia chromosome.
[1] At the time of his death, he was the Gaylord P. and Mary Louise Harnwell Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
He joined the Navy, and during his tour he conducted research at the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in San Francisco.
[2] Nowell credits his ultimate discovery of the so-called Philadelphia chromosome to an accident he made while cleaning a research slide.
He spent two years in the US Navy studying radiation and bone marrow transplantation and then returned to UPenn where he joined the faculty in 1956.
This discovery was a critical step in showing that cancer has a genetic basis, contrary to a widespread belief at the time.
In the 1960s, he published that phytohemagglutinin was capable of triggering mitosis, which allowed scientists to grow cells in culture for the study for cancer.