Alice Segers Whittemore, PhD, a longtime AACR member who was professor emerita of epidemiology and population health at the Stanford University School of Medicine, died December 2, 2025, at the age of 89.
In a Stanford career that spanned 40 years, Whittemore developed statistical methods to study the effects of genetic predisposition and modifiable lifestyle factors on the risk of cancers of the breast, ovaries, skin, and prostate.
Born in New York in 1936, Whittemore received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Marymount Manhattan College in 1958, a master’s degree in mathematics from Hunter College in 1964, and a doctorate in mathematics from City University of New York in 1976. She studied epidemiology and biostatistics at the New York University Medical Center before joining the faculty of Stanford in 1978, where she was chief of epidemiology from 1997 to 2001.
She became a member of the AACR in 1991 and served as assistant editor of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention from 1991 to 1998 and as an editorial board member from 1999 to 2015. She was also an assistant editor of Cancer Research from 1995 to 2000.
In 1999, she was awarded the AACR-American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. She also received the R.A. Fisher Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies in 2016.
Whittemore was a member of the Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a past president of the International Biometric Society.
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