DANIEL CATOVSKY, MD, DSc(Med), FRCPath, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Emeritus Professor and Fellow in the Division of Molecular Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK and Founding Member of iwCLL.
19 September 1937 – 2 December 2022
Professor Daniel Catovsky was born and grew up in Argentina obtaining his medical degree in Buenos Aires in 1961. In 1967 Daniel moved to London to train in haematology, with a particular interest in lymphocytes, under David Galton in the MRC Leukaemia Unit at the Hammersmith Hospital and Royal Postgraduate Medical School. Subsequently he was awarded a personal chair in haemato-oncology and in 1988 he became Head of Haematology at the Royal Marsden Hospital and The Institute of Cancer Research.
Daniel’s impact on haematology globally was immense. A world authority on chronic adult leukaemias, he held visiting professorships in many countries, served on the editorial boards of 10 national and international journals and published over 850 book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journals. His publications have been cited more than 70,000 times. One of the key people who brought CLL, the most common adult leukaemia, to the attention of the research community, he was co-ordinator of the UK CLL Trials 1, 2, 3 and 4. His work in hairy cell leukaemia helped transform the prognosis for patients with this disease. He was President of the British Society of Haematology (1996-1997) and of the European Research Initiative on CLL (ERIC) (2006-2009).
Daniel developed a passion for chronic lymphoid leukaemias well before CLL became fashionable. He was one of the Founding Members of the International Workshop on CLL which first met in 1979 as a group of 12 interested clinician scientists who became and remained lifelong friends. It is through the generous and collegiate leadership of Daniel and his peers that CLL has remained an exciting, friendly, and successful community. The recent dramatic impact of novel therapies on many thousands of patients with CLL globally is a result of the foundations that Daniel laid for the field of CLL.
Daniel was the first American Society for Hematology Ham-Wasserman Lecturer (1984). He was awarded the BSH Medal for contributions to British haematology (2000) and the iwCLL Binet-Rai medal for outstanding contributions to CLL research (2005). At iwCLL we all hugely miss our great friend Daniel Catovsky and thank him for his friendship and leadership over many decades.