Cancer Researcher Professor Arnold Graffi Dies in Berlin

Professor Graffi contributed significantly to the 

understanding of the development of cancer. In particular, his discoveries shed 

light on the processes of the development of cancer due to chemical substances 

and viruses, two of which bear his name. The major part of his research was 

performed between 1948 and 1975. During this period, he was department head at 

the former Academy Institute for Medicine and Biology in Berlin-Buch. There, he 

later became director of the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, which 

was integrated into the Max

DelbrückCenter

for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch after its founding in 1992. 

Arnold Graffi was 

born on June 19, 1910 in Bistritz (Transylvania). From 1930 to 1935, he studied 

medicine in Marburg, Leipzig, and Tübingen and received his doctorate at the 

Charité in Berlin. There, he worked in the group of the surgeon Ferdinand 

Sauerbruch from 1937 to 1939. After that, Arnold Graffi continued his work in 

cancer research at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Frankfurt/​Main until 1940. 

Following interim positions in Prague and Budapest, he returned to Berlin in 

1943, where he worked in a Schering AG research laboratory as well as with Nobel 

Prize laureate Otto Warburg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell 

Physiology. He completed his Habilitation

(postdoctoral qualification to become a professor) at the Humboldt University 

in Berlin and worked there until his retirement in 1975. Even after his 

retirement, he remained active for several years in cancer research in 

Berlin-Buch, focussing especially on problems of chemotherapy. 

As early as the 

beginning of the 1960s, Professor Graffi developed a gene therapy concept for 

cancer as well as viral and and genetic diseases whose idea was to target and 

switch off disease-causing genes, making them inactive. Since then, this 

technology of gene silencing (keyword: short interfering RNA or siRNA) has 

become an important tool in molecular biology and biotechnology.

Professor Graffi

was the recipient of numerous awards. In 1964, he was elected as a member of 

the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, and, in 1977, he received 

the academy’s Cothenius Medal. In 1979, he was awarded the Paul Ehrlich Prize 

in Frankfurt/​Main and, in 1984, the Helmholtz Medal of the Academy of Sciences 

in Berlin. In 1990, the University of Leipzig awarded him an honorary 

doctorate. In 1995, he received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal 

Republic of Germany. Apart from his academic work, Professor Graffi was also 

interested in painting and piano music.

Professor Arnold Graffi (private)

Further information

• Professor Arnold Graffi