On Jan. 13, 1938, Dr. Carl Voegtlin became the first director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), established by Congress with the National Cancer Institute Act of 1937 (Senate Bill 2067). Voegtlin was Chief of the Division of Pharmacology of the National Institute of Health from 1913-1940, and Director of Cancer Research, 1937-1938.

Voegtlin served as Chief of the NCI from 1938 until his retirement in 1943, when he became a consultant to the Manhattan Project at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, New York. Dr. Voegtlin was on the faculty at Rochester from 1946 to 1952.