Nobel laureate · birth-card coordinate
Harold E. Varmus's Birth Card: The King of Hearts
The Compassionate King
A birth card is a calendar coordinate for the month and day. It is not fortune-telling and does not predict a Nobel Prize.
In the record
Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. The birth-card coordinate for December 18 is the King of Hearts — a calendar position, not a forecast of the 1989 Physiology or Medicine prize.
Nobel Prize record
- 1989 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes
1989 — The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
“for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes”
Shared with J. Michael Bishop (3♦). The award was divided; this laureate's listed portion is 1/2.
226 other Physiology or Medicine laureates in this set carry a birth-card coordinate.
The King of Hearts coordinate
Harold E. Varmus's birthday maps to the King of Hearts (The Compassionate King). Card Blueprints treats that as a 365-day coordinate: solar value = 55 − (2 × month + day), and the year is unused. It is not a prediction about a Nobel Prize and not a verdict on Harold E. Varmus. The card's own language, quoted as system copy rather than biography: You hold emotional authority without hiding behind it.
Harold E. Varmus in the public record
He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was a co-recipient (along with J. Michael Bishop) of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes. He was also the director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999 and the 14th Director of the National Cancer Institute from 2010 to 2015, a post to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama. Varmus was born on December 18, 1939, to Beatrice, a social service worker, and Frank Varmus, a physician, Jewish parents of Eastern European descent, in Oceanside, New York. In 1957, he graduated from Freeport High School in Freeport, New York, and enrolled at Amherst College, intending to follow in his father's footsteps as a medical doctor, but eventually graduating with a B.A. in English literature. He went on to earn an M.A. in English at Harvard University in 1962, before changing his mind once again and applying to medical schools. He was twice rejected from Harvard Medical School.
Summarised from the lead section of the Wikipedia article Harold E. Varmus (CC BY-SA 4.0). No biographical facts were written for this page beyond that article.
Where the record meets the 2 of Clubs
A card is a calendar coordinate, not a cause. What follows sets one line of the card's own published language beside one sentence of the sourced record, paired by a documented rule. It is a resemblance offered for the reader to weigh — not a claim about Harold E. Varmus, and not a forecast of a Nobel Prize.
Cards in Harold E. Varmus's fixed path
Birth card and karma
- K♥ — Birth Card: The Compassionate King
- 9♠ — Karma — Environment: The Idealistic Mind
- 2♣ — Karma — Displacement: The Collaborative Builder
Life Spread (Mercury → Result / Cosmic Reward)
- K♦ — Life Spread — Mercury
- 6♥ — Life Spread — Venus
- 4♣ — Life Spread — Mars
- J♠ — Life Spread — Saturn
- 8♣ — Life Spread — Uranus
- 6♦ — Life Spread — Neptune
- 4♠ — Life Spread — Pluto
- 10♥ — Life Spread — Result / Cosmic Reward
Planetary ruling card, karma and Life Spread
- 2♦ — Planetary Ruling Card: The Financial Partner
- A♦ — PRC Karma — Environment: The Wealth Pioneer
- 6♣ — PRC Karma — Displacement: The Nurturing Creator
- 10♦ — PRC Life Spread — Uranus: The Wealthy Master
- 8♠ — PRC Life Spread — Neptune: The Powerful Mind
- A♥ — PRC Life Spread — Pluto: The Emotional Pioneer
Birth card from the month and day. Karma cards are fixed to the birth card. The planetary ruling card comes from the sun sign's ruling planet — the signs with two rulers carry two. The Life Spread is the birth card's fixed row of nine in the Life Spread — the cards that colour each 52-day period for life. Planetary period and long-range cards move year by year and are not shown on a static page.
You think best with someone else in the room, and you still leave with a position of your own. You think best with others. Ideas solidify when you talk them through. You're the debater, the collaborator, the one who makes partnerships work through communication.
Much of this work was conducted jointly with Michael Bishop in a notably long scientific partnership.
Paired on shared wording: partnership, work.
Also on the record
- That same year, he entered the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and later worked at a missionary hospital in Bareilly, India, and the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.
- As an alternative to serving militarily in the Vietnam War, Varmus joined the Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health in 1968.
- Working under Ira Pastan, he researched the regulation of bacterial gene expression by cyclic AMP.
- In 1970, he began postdoctoral research in Bishop's lab at University of California, San Francisco.
Other laureates with this card
- Alvin E. Roth — 2012 Economic Sciences
- André F. Cournand — 1956 Physiology or Medicine
- Arieh Warshel — 2013 Chemistry
- Baruch S. Blumberg — 1976 Physiology or Medicine
- Charles H. Townes — 1964 Physics
- Charles Richet — 1913 Physiology or Medicine
- Clinton Davisson — 1937 Physics
- Czesław Miłosz — 1980 Literature
- Doris Lessing — 2007 Literature
- George Beadle — 1958 Physiology or Medicine
- Ivan Bunin — 1933 Literature
- J.J. Thomson — 1906 Physics
- 10 more laureates share this card.
FAQ
- What is Harold E. Varmus's birth card?
- The King of Hearts. December 18 maps to that card through the public Card Blueprints formula. The year of birth is not used.
- Does a birth card predict a Nobel Prize?
- No. These pages are coordinates, not fortune-telling. A birth card names a calendar day in a 52-card year. It does not forecast prizes, character, or fate.
- Where do Harold E. Varmus's dates come from?
- Birth date 1939-12-18 is the Nobel Prize API v2.1 day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (CC0, day precision, Gregorian preferred). The two sources match. Year-only Nobel dates and Nobel↔Wikidata conflicts are dropped, not guessed. Page hooks and evidence come from the Wikipedia REST summary (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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Sources: Nobel Prize API v2.1 (laureate 441) + Wikidata CC0 (Q295691) + Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0 (Harold E. Varmus). Birth date 1939-12-18 is the Nobel day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (match).