His parents emigrated from Russia to Canada and the United States. His sister Sophie became a concert pianist and his brother Lionel earned a Ph.D. at the
University of Toronto Emmanuel Farber graduated in 1942 with an M.D. from the
University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. From 1950 to 1961 Farber a faculty member at
Tulane University, starting as an instructor and resigning as an associate professor. Emmanuel and Ruth's daughter, Naomi Beth, was born in 1956. From 1961 to 1970 at the
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, he was a professor of pathology and chair of the department of pathology and also a professor in the department of biochemistry. From 1970 to 1975 he was the director of the Fels Research Institute (now called the Fels Cancer Institute for Personalized Medicine) and a professor of pathology and biochemistry at the
Temple University School of Medicine. and
Chemico-Biological Interactions. From 1961 to 1964 he served on the
Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. Farber's research demonstrated that carcinogens can bind to
DNA, causing specific DNA
adducts that promote cancer. He and his colleagues showed that cancer can be induced in the livers of laboratory animals by a step-by-step series of chemical treatments. He was the author or coauthor of over 400 scientific publications. He was elected in 1980 a fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada and in 2013 an inaugural fellow of the Academy of the
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He served as the AACR's president from 1972 to 1973. In 1973 he was also the president of the American Society for Experimental Pathology (which is now part of the
American Society for Investigative Pathology). and in 1984 the G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Lecture. In 1995 he shared the
ASIP Gold-Headed Cane Award with
Paul Eston Lacy. In May 2000 Farber married Henrietta Schleider
née Keller (1915–2011). Upon his death in 2014 he was survived by his daughter. His daughter Naomi married
Steven E. Grosby (a professor of religion) and became a professor of social work at the
University of South Carolina. ==Selected publications==