
Richard T Silver, MD
Professor Emeritus of Medicine
Weill Cornell Medical College
Dr. Silver is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and an attending physician at The New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is also the Emeritus Director, Richard T Silver Myeloproliferative Neoplasms Center, Weill Cornell Medical College. He received his AB and his MD degree from Cornell University and completed an internship and residency (hematology/oncology) at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. He also was a Clinical Associate at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. As a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil, Dr. Silver helped establish a residency program, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. His research included the study of blood groups of the primitive Indians of the Upper Xingu River region, which led to his discovery of the third allele in the Kidd blood subgroup, among other findings.
Dr. Silver is internationally recognized as one of the pioneers in clinical cancer chemotherapy and clinical and translational investigations in the myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) and chronic myeloid leukemia. He is particularly known for the broad clinical application of the interferons for treating these diseases and is widely credited with developing and popularizing the use of the bone marrow biopsy technique used worldwide for the diagnosis of hematologic disorders.
He is a prolific author and lecturer at many national and international meetings and has held many distinguished visiting professorships. He has co-chaired 12 international congresses on MPNs. His many honors include the Career Achievement Award for Clinical Research in Hematology from Celgene Corporation; Gedalio and Sonia Grinberg/Nathaniel Wisch, MD, Endowed Visiting Lectureship Award, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; the European Leukemia Net Merit Award; the Levine Cancer Institute/University of North Carolina, Charlotte Outstanding Achievement Award; and Honorary Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Israeli Society of Hematology and Blood Transfusion and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The Richard T Silver Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Oncology and the Richard T Silver MPN Center at Weill Cornell Medical College have been named in recognition of his contributions to the understanding and treatment of MPNs.