Charles Sawyers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has defined the molecular lesions that cause cancer and used these insights to develop new drugs. Specifically, Sawyers was one of the critical members of the team that brought imatinib and dasatinib to bear on chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Furthermore, his work has identified second-generation antiandrogen drugs to treat castration-resistant prostate cancer. This interview reveals personal stories of a physician-scientist called “the greatest cancer researcher of our time” by one of his peers.