Dr John Michael Bishop was an American virologist, foremost medical researcher, and an award-winning teacher. He shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Harold Varmus for achievements in clarifying the origins of cancer.

Bishop was born on 22nd February 1936 in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Gettysburg College in 1957 and from Harvard Medical School in 1962. After spending two years in internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, he became a researcher in virology at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.

They won the award for the discovery of normal genes whose malfunction disposes of cells to become cancerous. Their finding is widely credited with sparking a revolution in cancer research. Bishop was honoured on a stamp issued by the Palau Islands in 2000.

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