William C. Moloney (1907-1998)

• ASH Oral History transcript  
• Articles published in Blood and The Hematologist

William Curry Moloney, MD, who studied and treated blood diseases before hematology became a medical specialty, was a professor emeritus of medicine at Harvard Medical School and former director of hematology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He was one of the first hematologists to use chemotherapy to treat leukemia and lymphoma. Dr. Moloney was also an early contributor to the development of specific diagnostic tests, some of which are still in use today.

Born in Boston in 1907, Dr. Moloney worked his way through Tufts College and Tufts Medical School and started his career as a family doctor in Jamaica Plain, Mass. He was a recognized authority on safe procedures for blood transfusions, and his expertise in blood banks stood him in good stead in World War II, when he oversaw transfusions to wounded soldiers.

After the war, in the early 1950s, Dr. Moloney directed research for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima, Japan. Later, in the Marshall Islands, he studied the effects of errant radiation and the mechanisms that produce leukemia. Dr. Moloney died at 91 in Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital.