At that bill signing, he was given one of the pens used by President Nixon to sign the legislation. Educational and professional honors given to Green have included: (1) multiple honorary societies (Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Gamma Alpha, Phi Lambda Upsilon, and Phi Kappa Phi); (2) an NIH lifetime Research Career Award (1969–present); (3) the NIH R.E. Dyer Lectureship Award (1972); (4) the 1976 University of Chicago Howard Taylor Ricketts Award (1976) (5) Burroughs-Wellcome Fellow (1986–1987); (6) the 1990 American Cancer Society John Krey III Memorial Award; (7) the 2002 American Cancer Society (Heartland Division) Spirit of Health Award; and (8) the 2002 Academy of Science of St. Louis Peter H. Raven Lifetime Award and Fellow. Green married Marilyn Glick (1929–2010) on August 20, 1950. They had three children: Michael R. Green, M.D., Ph.D. (born January 20, 1954; a molecular and cancer biologist researcher, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, director of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Cancer Center, chairman of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Department of Molecular, Cell, and Cancer Biology, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine), Wendy A. Green Lee, M.D. (born February 15, 1957; a pediatrician); and Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D. (born December 10, 1959; a pathologist and genomics researcher, a major participant in the Human Genome Project) currently director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health. Green has three granddaughters and two grandsons. Green was one of the founding scientists in the field of tumor virology, an area of biomedical research investigating the role that viruses play in cancer. His early studies were major contributions to the general armamentarium of techniques and concepts used in experimental virology today. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Green was among the first scientists in the world to study biochemical features of virus replication in cell culture and to develop and apply the emerging concepts of molecular biology. His major focus of investigation was human adenoviruses. He and his colleagues worked out the basic parameters for working with these viruses – for example, how to grow them in culture, to purify the virions, to extract and characterize the viral DNA, and to study gene expression at the RNA and protein levels.