Georgios Papanikolaou (1883-1962) : Medical researcher

Georgios Papanikolaou became one of the world’s finest doctors and was born in Kymi, Evia in 1883. As a young boy he was a lover of nature, but, most especially, he loved the sea. He would often sail with his boat alone and as a young boy it was his ambition to join the Navy. Georgios’ father was a doctor and, in 1907, Georgios decided to study medicine at the University of Athens from which he graduated with honours. It was in 1910 that he took the greatest decision of his life - to dedicate his life to biological research. Laboratory conditions in Greece were not favourable and biological research in 1910 in Greece was only in its infancy. He decided that he needed to go abroad, explaining to his parents that “My ideal is not to get rich, nor to seek to live in happiness but to work to act, to create to do something worthy of a strong, ethical man”.

In 1912, a war broke out in the Balkans. While serving in the Medical Reserve Corps, he served with a number of Greek-Americans and they told him that the opportunities for his sort of work were plenty in the United States. So when the war was over, he emigrated to New York; but, as with so many of the immigrants in America in the early 1900s, life proved difficult. He worked in a carpet store while his wife sewed buttons for only $5 a week.

The big step came in 1914 when he was employed in the Pathological Anatomical Laboratory of the New York Hospital. He was to work there for 47 years from 1914-1961.

As with many scientists, Papanikolaou met a great deal of opposition to his early research. By 1928, his research had led him to discover cancer cells in vaginal smears. This allowed him not only to diagnose the existence of cancer at an early stage, but also to detect pre-cancerous conditions. But it would be almost 20 years before the medical establishment recognised the value of his method of detecting vaginal cancer.

Dr Pap, as Papanikolaou became affectionately known, gave his name to the medical process of the ‘Pap smear’ or the ‘Pap test’.

Georgios worked for almost 50 years without taking a holiday but was able, at the age of 71, to return for a short while to his family and friends back in Greece. He was even able to sail a boat on the sea like he did as a boy. Back in America, at the age of 78, Nick decided finally to leave New York and settle in Miami. He decided to set up the Papanikolaou Cancer Research Institute but was unable to open it himself, as planned, when he died of a heart attack in 1962.

Georgios Papanikolaou has been described as the man “who gave away life to the women of the whole world”. He had a simple philosophy ‘not to become rich but to create something worthy of a human being’. His research led, and still leads, to the saving of thousands of human lives is every year, and women the world over are eternally grateful for Pap’s pioneering work. In Greece, his homeland, he is remembered in the names of hospitals; his portrait appears on banknotes and postage stamps. As our project suggests, without the work of men such as ‘Dr. Pap’, ‘we are nothing’.

Web Links

Who named it?
American Society for Clinical Pathology
The Papanikolaou Society of Cytopathology

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