Mary-Claire King, PhD, is American Cancer Society Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. She was the first to show that breast cancer is inherited in some families, as the result of mutations in the gene that she named BRCA1. In addition to inherited breast and ovarian cancer, her research interests include the genetic bases of schizophrenia, genetic disorders in children, and human evolution. She pioneered the use of DNA sequencing for human rights investigations.

Dr. King has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Philosophical Society, and as a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences. She has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH; the National Commission on Breast Cancer of the President’s Cancer Panel; multiple councils and study sections of the NIH; and as past president of the American Society of Human Genetics. In 2014, she received the Lasker Special Achievement Award for Medical Research and in 2016 the United States National Medal of Science.

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