Green city councillor Mike Woodin has told colleagues at Oxford Town Hall that he is suffering cancer.
Dr Woodin, 37, a Balliol College psychology lecturer, is to undergo chemotherapy treatment and did not attend the council meeting on February 16.
Fellow councillors signed a card, sending best wishes to Dr Woodin and family. The father-of-two, whose partner is the former Green city councillor Deborah Glass, said: "I wanted to let people close to me at the council know what was happening."
Dr Woodin, who represents the Carfax ward, has been a councillor for 10 years and was the first Green to be elected to the city council.
The leader of the council's Green group is the Green Party's national principal speaker and has fronted a number of European and general election campaigns.
In 2001, he wrote the Green Party's election manifesto report Reach For The Future.
A resident of Marlborough Road, south Oxford, Dr Woodin has lived in Oxford for 17 years.
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