Harold Eliot Varmus was born in Oceanside, New York, on December 18, 1939. He attended Amherst College, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1961 (twenty-three years later, Amherst would award him with an honorary doctorate). Varmus went on to perform graduate work at Harvard University, receiving an M.A. degree in 1962, then he studied medicine at Columbia University, receiving an M.D. in 1966.

Varmus practiced medicine as an intern and resident at the Presbyterian Hospital of New York City between 1966 and 1968. He then worked as a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1968 to 1970. Moving to California, Varmus served as a lecturer in the department of microbiology at the University of California in San Francisco, becoming an associate professor in 1974--the same year that he was named associate editor of Cell and Virology--then, in 1979, he was promoted to full professor of microbiology, biochemistry, and...