In Memoriam: Lois Swirsky Gold, 1941-2012

Lois Swirsky Gold, who was the director of the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 30 years, died last month at a hospital in San Francisco. She was 70 years old and had been suffering from cancer.

Gold, who was trained as a political scientist, became a self-taught expert on toxins and the carcinogenic effects of chemicals. Together with Bruce Ames, a biochemist at Berkeley, they assembled a comprehensive database of studies that explore the carcinogenic effects of chemicals on animals, particularly rats and mice. She was the co-author of the 2003 book Misconceptions About the Causes of Cancer.

Dr. Gold was a native of Newark, New Jersey. She was a graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore and earned a Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University.