Cantoni, Giulio L. (1915-2005)
Giulio Cantoni, M.D., was the founding chief of one of the National Institute of Mental Health's laboratories as well as the founding music director of the FAES Chamber Music Series at the NIH. He pioneered understanding of methylation, a key chemical reaction increasingly appreciated as the switch that turns genes on and off in biological processes ranging from cancer metastasis to nurture's influence on nature in shaping stress reactivity.
Dr. Cantoni arrived at NIH in 1954, establishing one of the first laboratories in the then fledgling NIMH Intramural Research Program, the Laboratory of General and Comparative Biochemistry, where he worked initially in the newly opened Clinical Center. He remained as the chief of the laboratory until 1994. Dr. Cantoni was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. A Jewish refugee from Mussolini's Italy, he arrived to New York just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a story recounted in his autobiography, From Milan to New York by Way of Hell: Fascism and the Odyssey of a Young Italian Jew.