death_date death_place birth_place image_size nationality field birth_date known_for prizes article_title name alma_mater
1 january 1958 st. bartholomews hospital , london ec1 , england velwell villas , exeter 180px united kingdom pathology 23 may 1881 discovery activity of the first pure compound to show carcinogenic royal society medal -lrb- 1941 -rrb- fellow of the royal ernest kennaway
 sir ernest laurence kennaway university college london university of oxford
ernest kennaway

sir ernest laurence kennaway frs -lrb- 23 may 1881 -- 1 january 1958 -rrb- was a british pathologist and royal medal winner .
he first became interested in natural life when , due to a childhood illness , he was encouraged to spend time outdoors .
he was trained at university college london , and in 1898 was accepted into new college , oxford on an open scholarship to study natural sciences .
he graduated with a ba in 1903 , and after three years at middlesex hospital he gained a bachelors of medicine and surgery .
after graduating he worked for the lister institute for preventive medicine and ucl before returning to oxford , this time to brasenose college on a hulme scholarship in 1909 .
he became a travelling fellow of brasenose in 1910 , a doctor of medicine in 1911 and a doctor of science -lrb- specifically physiological chemistry -rrb- in 1915 .
in 1909 he became a physiology demonstrator at guy 's hospital , where he remained until he was made head of the department of chemical pathology at the bland-sutton institute of pathology in 1914 .
as head of department he conducted research into purine metabolism and ketonuria , proving in 1921 that the carcinogen in coal was a cyclic hydrocarbon .
in 1929 he discovered the first pure compound to show evidence of cancer-causing activity , 1:2:5:6 - dibenzanthracene , and also discovered a series of other carcinogenic hydrocarbons including methylcholanthrene .
in 1930 , kennaway and izrael hieger showed for the first time that single polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons -lrb- pahs -rrb- , such as dibenzare tumorigenic in mouse skin .
between 1932 and 1942 he published six articles on these discoveries in the `` proceedings of the royal society '' .
after the death of professor archibald leitch in 1931 kenneway became professor of chemical pathology at the university of london , where he remained until his retirement in 1946 .
he was awarded the royal medal in 1941 `` for his discovery of the nature of the carcinogenic substances in coal tar and for his investigations on production of cancer by synthetic substances . ''
and was knighted in 1947 .
for over thirty years he had suffered from parkinson 's disease , and this eventually killed him on 1 january 1958 .
