Dr. Philip Strax | |
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| Born | January 1, 1909 |
| Died | March 9, 1999 (aged 90) |
| Education | M.D., New York University School of Medicine, 1931 |
| Known for | Research on and advocacy of mammography for breast cancer screening |
| Awards | Kettering Prize shared with Sam Shapiro (1988) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Radiology |
Philip Strax (January 1, 1909 – March 9, 1999) was an American radiologist who pioneered the use of mammography to screen for early breast cancer. With his co-investigators, the statistician Sam Shapiro and the surgeon Louis Venet, he conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing outcomes of over 60,000 women who received either mammogram and clinical breast exam (study group) or standard medical care (control group). The first results of this study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1966. The study demonstrated that screening mammograms, which are routine periodic mammograms of asymptomatic women, could find breast cancer at an early enough stage to save lives. For this research Strax and Shapiro shared the Kettering Prize for outstanding contributions to cancer diagnosis or treatment in 1988.