George Nicholas Papanicolaou: the unlikely story of an intellectual immigrant; one driven to contribute on a large stage; one who finally succeeded by scientifically inspiring numerous cooperating individuals and organizations

Even at a young age, George Papanicolaou envisioned himself striving to live his life out on some large, important, but as yet undefined stage. After receiving his MD at 21, he resisted family pressure to take over his father's medical practice, earned a PhD in Germany, eloped with a woman who agreed to a life dedicated to science, and immigrated to America. At Cornell, he developed the vaginal smear technique to study endocrine cytology and then extended animal studies to humans, obtaining daily smears for years from his lab assistant wife. Around 1925, he recognized malignant cells in smears from asymptomatic women with cervical cancer. After the smear technique was initially rebuffed in 1928, he later collaborated with gynecologists, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and many others to develop the field of diagnostic cytopathology and medical history's first effective cancer screening test.