American Health Foundation

Dr. Dietrich Hoffmann currently holds the position of Associate Director at the Institute for Cancer Prevention. He is an active member of the research team in the newly created Division of Cancer Etiology and Prevention. Dr. Hoffmann has been consulted by numerous national and international Advisory and research committees probing various aspects related to tobacco and health, including an effort by the US government to examine the feasibility of creating a self-extinguishing cigarette so as to reduce the toll of fire-related deaths that are attributed to cigarette use. Dr. Hoffmann's extensive knowledge of and fundamental contributions to research on tobacco-related are reflected in more than 300 peer-reviewed (out of a total of 476) publications.

In 1970, Dietrich Hoffmann joined Dr. Ernst L. Wynder in the founding of the American Health Foundation (Now known as The Institute for Cancer Prevention) as a free-standing, prevention-oriented, interdisciplinary research center. Here, the studies in experimental tobacco carcinogenesis received new impetus with the discovery by Hoffmann et al of the tobacco-specific, carcinogenic N-nitrosamines (TSNA.)

Dr. Hoffmann received his doctorate degree from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich, Germany, under Nobel laureate, Professor Dr. Adolf Butenandt, in 1957. In the course of research at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, he was the first to employ a radioactive tracer technique in the determination of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in cigarette smoke. In addition to cigarette smoke analyses, Dr. Hoffmann developed and applied methodology for assessment of PAH in gasoline and Diesel engine exhaust effluents, in urban air, and in indoor atmospheres.