"When Harold went to assume the directorship of the NIH, none of us was exactly sure how it would work out because he had never had a position of great administrative responsibility," Weindruck said. "But it worked out brilliantly. He turned out to be an extraordinary director and an excellent spokesman for the scientific community."

Varmus's tenure at NIH saw enormous success for the institute, both in gaining bipartisan political support and in recruiting talenting researchers. The New Yorker called Varmus perhaps "the most effective backstairs politician the Clinton Administration has produced." Congress gave him the highest compliment of all: a $5 billion funding increase.

In October 1999, Varmus, who is now 61, announced he would leave NIH to become president and chief executive of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, one of the nation's largest cancer hospitals. The move brought him closer to his two children, who live in Queens, and increased his salary almost six-fold--to nearly $1 million a year. It also meant the end of his long-time habit of bicycling to work.

He took over in January 2000.

Today Varmus comes to Cambridge often. He last publically visited Dec. 16 when he addressed an orientation event for newly elected members of the U.S. Congress at the Kennedy School. But he says he's not a candidate for the Harvard post.

Varmus declined to comment for this story, saying that he does not want to confuse people at Sloan-Kettering to whom he has made commitments. But in describing why he took the New York job to the Washington Post, he gave a list of characteristics that could be used to describ e the Harvard presidency.

"I was looking for an opportunity to continue to run something," he said, at a "place where science and clinical activities can be brought together in an important way, and in a city I deeply like."