[Papanicolaou and the cervical smear].

George N. Papanicolaou (1883-1962) was born in Kymi (on the island of Euboea, Greece). He studied medicine in Athens but chose not to join his father's practice in Kymi. Instead, he obtained his doctoral degree at the Zoological Institute in Munich (1910) and - after a brief return and marriage in Greece - went to work at the Oceanographic Institute in Monaco. Recalled in 1912 by the death of his mother and the Balkan Wars, he and his wife emigrated a year later to New York. After some difficulty, he found work as a research biologist at the Cornell University Department of Anatomy. Papanicolaou concentrated on vaginal cells right from the start, initially from guinea pigs. His real goal was to harvest egg cells for the study of sex differentiation; he succeeded in finding the right time by recording the cyclic changes in genital epithelium. These same changes appeared to occur during the human menstrual cycle. It was by chance that he encountered cancer cells in a human specimen in 1928. More than 10 years would pass before he took up the subject of cancer again, in collaboration with the gynaecologist Herbert F. Traut (1894-1963). After their first publication in 1941, Papanicolaou gradually fine-tuned the technique of cytological diagnostics in a variety of organs. In 1961, he moved to Miami Beach as head of a new cancer centre, but suddenly died a few months later.