On Oct. 13, 1962, the groundbreaking ceremony for the McArdle Cancer Research Institute building was held. The construction of the first McArdle building resulted from a bequest by Michael W. McArdle, a prominent Chicago industrialist and attorney from Door County Wisconsin. Expanded facilities, funded by the National Cancer Institute, were provided by the construction in 1964 of the present McArdle Laboratory.

In the 1930s, a bequest in the will of Jennie Bowman established the Jonathan Bowman Memorial fund in memory of her father, a prominent state senator. This fund provided the seed money for the initiation of a cancer research program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The Bowman funds initially were allocated for fellowships to promising young investigators interested in studying cancer. One of the Bowman Fellows, Dr. Harold P. Rusch, became the first Director of the McArdle Laboratory and established the cancer research program at the University of Wisconsin.

In its early years, a major focus of McArdle’s research program centered on studies of chemical carcinogenesis. McArdle scientists established the basis of the chemical induction of various cancers and discovered how known carcinogens initiate the genetic changes in cells that result in tumor formation. Early studies also focused on the biochemistry of cancer cells and how they differ from normal cells. Gradually the focus of the research program was expanded to other areas of cancer research including the role of viruses in the causation of cancer and, more recently, the roles of oncogenes and developmental processes in cancer.