Alumnus Receives Knighthood for Services to Epidemiology

Harvey Mudd College 2010 Outstanding Alumnus Jack Cuzick ’70, an emeritus professor of Queen Mary University of London, has been included in The King’s New Year Honours list 2025, which recognizes the extraordinary achievements and service of individuals across the United Kingdom.

Cuzick received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2016, is a recipient of the 2015 American Cancer Society Medal of Honor and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Statistical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and has been published in major medical journals.

A Harvey Mudd mathematics alumnus, Cuzick received a master of science in mathematics from University of London (1971) and PhD in mathematics from Claremont Graduate University (1974).

Following is an excerpt from the Dec. 30, 2024, news release shared by Queen Mary University of London:

Emeritus Professor Cuzick has made major contributions to breast, cervical and prostate cancer prevention, prediction and screening in his 40-year career. Before retiring in 2023, Emeritus Professor Cuzick was the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Queen Mary and served as director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine from 2013-2021.

His Knighthood recognizes his work on demonstrating that anastrozole, a hormone blocker used for many years to treat breast cancer in postmenopausal women, is also safe and effective at preventing the disease. Professor Cuzick’s work led to anastrozole becoming the first drug to be repurposed through the world-leading Medicines Repurposing Programme, a multi-agency initiative in the UK that helps realise the full potential of existing medicines in new uses to save and improve more lives on the National Health Service (NHS).

A statistician by background, Emeritus Professor Cuzick’s career has had a transformative impact on breast and cervical cancer services in the NHS and throughout the world, saving the lives of millions of people.

On receiving his Knighthood, Emeritus Professor Cuzick said, “I am deeply honored to receive a Knighthood for my contributions to cancer prevention. I am proud to have dedicated my career to cancer prevention, and I’m grateful that my research has made important and useful contributions to this field. I hope that this award raises the profile of cancer prevention as an important field for scientific research and public interaction.”