Nancy Cox, an American virologist and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Influenza Division, died on April 23, 2026, at age 77.
Cox, who was born in 1949 and was a native of Curlew, Iowa, served as director of the CDC’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Control of Influenza from 1992 to 2014 and as director of the Influenza Division from 2006 to 2014. She graduated from Iowa State University in 1970 with a degree in bacteriology and earned a doctoral degree in virology at the University of Cambridge in 1975.
Cox began working on influenza at the CDC in 1976 and retired in December 2014 after 37 years and 278 publications.
Nancy Cox, 77, American virologist, glioblastoma.