Dr. Wharam joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1975, the second person recruited to the Kimmel Cancer Center’s radiation oncology program. He helped oversee planning and outfitting of the radiation oncology facilities for the new cancer center, which opened in 1977 as one of the first academic programs in radiation oncology in the U.S.

He also oversaw two expansions to radiation oncology, with the opening of the Kimmel Cancer Center’s Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building and a satellite facility at Green Spring Station in Lutherville, Maryland.


In 1990, Dr. Wharam was named acting director of the division of radiation oncology, and from 1994 to 2000 served as director of the division. He retired in December 2016. Upon Dr. Wharam’s retirement, Dr. DeWeese initiated a campaign to establish the Moody Wharam Professorship to honor his unparalleled contribution to the field of radiation oncology.

Dr. Wharam was a member of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology, the Children’s Oncology Group, and a fellow of both the American College of Radiology and the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

Before coming to Johns Hopkins, Dr. Wharam earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard University in 1963, and then served as a shipboard officer in the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet from 1963 to 1965. He earned his medical degree at the University of Virginia in 1969 and served an internship in medicine and pediatrics at Georgetown University Medical Center.

From 1970 to 1973, Dr. Wharam held a National Institutes of Health fellowship in radiation therapy at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco and held a faculty position at Duke University Medical School.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1941, Dr. Wharam is survived by his wife Sheila, children Julie Whelan, James Franklin Wharam and Anne Thomas, and eight grandchildren.

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