John W. Gofman, 88, Scientist and Advocate for Nuclear Safety, Dies

[bananas]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/26gofman.html

John W. Gofman, 88, Scientist and Advocate for Nuclear Safety, Dies

By JEREMY PEARCE
Published: August 26, 2007

Dr. John W. Gofman, a nuclear chemist and doctor who in the 1960s heightened public concerns about exposure to low-level radiation and became a leading voice against commercial nuclear power, died on Aug. 15 at his home in San Francisco. He was 88.


photo credit: Egan O’Connor, 1979
Dr. John W. Gofman

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

In 1964, while he was director of the biomedical research division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Dr. Gofman helped start a national inquiry into the safety of atomic power. At a symposium for nuclear scientists and engineers, he raised questions about a lack of data on low-level radiation and also proposed a wide-ranging study of exposure in medicine and the workplace, from fallout and other sources.

With a colleague at Livermore, Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin, Dr. Gofman then looked at health studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as other epidemiological studies, and conducted his own research on radiation’s influences on human chromosomes. In 1969, the two scientists suggested that federal safety guidelines for low-level exposures be reduced by 90 percent.

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