Distinguished Alumni Award 2006

The 2006 College of Arts & Sciences Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni award was presented to Dr. Lawrence Einhorn by Interim Dean David Zaret at the Annual Recognition Banquet held on October 13, 2006 in Bloomington.

Photo of Dr. Lawrence Einhorn Lawrence H. Einhorn, MD
BA '65

Dr. Lawrence Einhorn has become known as the man who helped cure Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong of testicular cancer. But his accomplishments go much further than that one success story. Dr. Einhorn graduated from Indiana University in 1965. He earned his medical degree at the University of Iowa in 1968, then returned to serve his internship and residency at the IU Medical Center. After a year’s fellowship in oncology at M.D. Anderson Hospital Tumor Institute in Houston, he returned to Indiana and has been here ever since. In 1987 he was named Distinguished Professor of Medicine. He is also a program director at the Walther Cancer Institute in Indianapolis.

Dr. Einhorn knew in high school that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a physician. He began his studies of chemotherapy in testicular cancer, using a platinum-based drug, in 1974. The treatment, which has increased the cure rate with metastatic testis cancer from 5 percent to 80 percent, became standard after the very first study. Dr. Einhorn also is a recognized authority on urologic, lung and other adult cancers.

In 2006, Einhorn was named the first Lance Armstrong Foundation Professor of Oncology at IU, with a $l.5 million endowment from the foundation to fund further research into testicular cancer. Among many other honors, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, both among the most prestigious organizations of their kind.