The Society of Toxicology (SOT) has learned of the passing of John Higginson on September 25, 2013. He served as the Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) from 1966–1981. He provided a brief history of IARC in a 1998 Forum article in Toxicological Sciences, The International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Dr. Higginson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1922 and attended the Royal Belfast Academical Instituion and Trinity College, Dublin, where he received a PhD in biology in and a doctorate in Medicine. He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London and served on committees of the National Academies of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Union for International Cancer Control. He was an Emeritus Member of SOT, having joined the Society in 1970.