John Gofman

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John Gofman

John Gofman (born September 21, 1918 in Cleveland , Ohio , † August 15, 2007 in San Francisco ) was an American nuclear physicist and molecular biologist . He researched the effects of uranium-233. In 1992 he received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) for his research on the Chernobyl accident and his warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy.

Life

John Gofman was born the son of Russian Jewish immigrants in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1939 he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Oberlin College . In 1943 he received his PhD in nuclear physics under Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California, Berkeley . Seaborg later called him one of his most brilliant students. He described the discovery of the radioisotopes Protactinium-232, Uranium-232, Protactinium-233 and Uranium-233 and their cleavage. John Gofman was the third scientist to conduct research with uranium isotopes.

In 1946 he received his doctorate in medicine (MD) at Berkeley, became an assistant professor in 1947 and then professor at the University Hospital in Berkeley, where he retired in 1973. In 1954 he founded the medical department at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and headed it until 1957 and in 1963 he founded the biomedical department, which he directed until 1965. Until 1969 he was also one of the nine deputy directors of the LLNL.

In 1969 he started a heated debate with his student Arthur Tamplin about the harmfulness of low doses of ionizing radiation (Gofman-Tamplin controversy). That coincided with a time when the debate about radiation hazards was receiving new impetus in the USA. At that time, for example, Ernest J. Sternglass published his thesis that fallout was responsible for 375,000 deaths of children under the age of one from 1951 to 1966 and also of an even higher number of fetuses. The group leader at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Tamplin, who had investigated the fallout risk himself, criticized the Sternglass numbers as being around a factor of a hundred too high, which, however, still showed a higher risk than official agencies at the AEC were willing to admit. Presented this at an IEEE conference in 1969, Gofman and Tamplin said that if the US population had received the maximum allowable dose of 0.17 rads per year during their lifespan (which they pointed out was nowhere near the case) it would add 17,000 additional cancer cases per year would result. In their opinion, the permitted maximum doses were too high and the dangers of low radiation doses underestimated and, in view of the uncertainties, they recommended lowering the limit values ​​by a factor of 10. In doing so, they relied on the LNT model (linear extrapolation of high doses), which was later criticized ). Their work met with criticism from the AEC (which funded their research) and asked to use more modified expressions and to coordinate work for a wider audience with them in the future. Gofman and Taylor did not want to go into this and the tone of their criticism also intensified noticeably. According to Gofman, not only were the limit values ​​inadequate, but they also denied that the benefits of civilian use of nuclear power would outweigh these dangers. A majority of other radiation protection experts contradicted them at the time, and the NCRP also announced in 1971 that it considered its recommendations to be well founded in view of the criticism from Gofman and Taylor, but they met with greater approval from the wider public and the Federal Radiation Council (FRC ) recommended that new studies be carried out.

In 1971 he founded the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility , which investigated the health effects of ionizing radiation. Three Nobel Prize winners worked with him. In 1992 he received the Right Livelihood Award together with the Ukrainian journalist Alla Jaroschinska “for his pioneering work in depicting the health consequences of low doses of ionizing radiation ”.

John Gofman published numerous papers on physical, chemical, medical and molecular biological research.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Walker, Permissible Dose, University of California Press 2000, p. 38
  2. ↑ American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  3. ^ J. Samuel Walker, Permissible Dose, University of California Press 2000, pp. 36ff
  4. ↑ Tamplin published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 25, December 1969, pp. 23-29
  5. ^ Walker, Permissible Dose, p. 41
  6. ↑ John Gofman ratical.org
personal data
SURNAME Gofman, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American nuclear physicist and molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 2007
Place of death San Francisco