Donald Floyd Gleason

Donald Floyd Gleason (November 20, 1920 – December 28, 2008) was an American physician and pathologist, best known for devising the "Gleason score" which predicts the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in patients. He was a former chief of pathology at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, and received three degrees from and taught at the University of Minnesota.

Early life Gleason was born in Spencer, Iowa, though he grew up in Litchfield, Minnesota, where his father, Fred Gleason, ran a hardware store, and his mother, Ethel, was a schoolteacher. He attended the University of Minnesota, and received his bachelor's degree, M.D., and Ph.D. from that institution. He entered the U.S. Army Medical Corps, serving an internship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and training as a resident in pathology at the VA hospital in Minneapolis.

Career and test development Gleason remained at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center after World War II. In 1962, Dr. George Mellinger, the hospital's chief of urology, who was administering a cooperative research project involving fourteen hospitals, asked Gleason to develop a standardized pathological testing system to measure the development of prostate cancer. At the time, no single system existed to measure the speed at which prostate cancer spreads, nor was there they were difficult to apply in practice, and pathologists often developed their own. This lack of a single standard led to confusion in patients' treatment and difficulties in the evaluation of potential new treatments.

Personal and later life Gleason was for many years a resident of Richfield, Minnesota. He died of a heart attack on December 28, 2008 in Edina, Minnesota and was survived by his wife, Nancy (to whom he was married for 62 years) and three daughters, Donna, Sue, and Ginger.