Princeton High School announces newest member of Academic and Career Hall of Fame

Dr. Rich Halberg will become the newest member of the Princeton High School Academic and Career Hall of Fame.

Halberg will be honored Friday, Sept. 9, during a ceremony in which he will address the student body.

Halberg graduated from Princeton High School in 1983. He received a bachelor’s degree with majors in biology and chemistry and a minor in mathematics from the University of Iowa. Halberg graduated with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Michigan State University.

Halberg is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Oncology at the University of Wisconsin, with appointments in the Carbone Cancer Center, Institute of Clinical and Translational Research and the William S. Middleton Veterans Hospital.

In 2021, he was appointed senior director of biomedical research facilities overseeing 34 cores in the School of Medicine and Public Health.

Halberg helped prove a longstanding theory in cancer biology was incorrect. Scientists believed for more than 100 years that each cancer is derived from a single rogue cell. Halberg and his research team demonstrated a cancer can be derived from multiple rogue cells and that is why cancer can be so difficult to treat.

Halberg’s research has been described in more than 70 publications of leading scientific journals and supported by grants from the American Cancer Society, American Association of Cancer Research, Department of Defense, National Cancer Institute and NASA.

For more information on the Princeton High School Academic and Career Hall of Fame, visit http://phs-il.org/hall-of-fame/.