Vincent T. DeVita Jr., M.D., is a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health at Yale School of Medicine. He was the director of the National Cancer Institute and the National Cancer Program from 1980 to 1988. In 1988 he joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as the physician in chief. In 1993 he became the director of the Yale Cancer Center. At the NCI, he developed chemotherapy, proving that advanced cancers can be cured by drugs. He is a former president of the American Cancer Society and the coeditor of Cancer: Principles & Practice of Oncology, a textbook of cancer medicine.