John H. Lawrence

Dr. John H. Lawrence
Born	(1904-01-07)January 7, 1904 Canton, South Dakota, United States
Died	September 7, 1991(1991-09-07) (aged 87) Berkeley, California, United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Nuclear Medicine
Institutions	Harvard University Donner Laboratory , University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater	University of South Dakota Harvard University
Known for	invention of the nuclear medicine
Notable awards	Enrico Fermi Award 1983

John Hundale Lawrence (January 7, 1904 – September 7, 1991) was an American physicist and physician best known for pioneering the field of nuclear medicine.

Background

John Hundale Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota. His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson) Lawrence, were both the offspring of Norwegian immigrants who had met while teaching at the high school in Canton, South Dakota, where his father was also the superintendent of schools. His brother was physicist Ernest O. Lawrence. He attended college at the University of South Dakota before getting his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in physics in 1957.

Career

He had a long-term association with the University of California, Berkeley and worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There he discovered treatments for leukemia and polycythemia by injecting infected mice with radioactive phosphorus derived from the cyclotron invented by his brother, the Nobel Laureate Ernest O. Lawrence.

Lawrence's work with cancer patients attracted the interest of William Donner, a Philadelphia industrialist and philanthropist, whose son had died of cancer. Donner contributed funds for construction of Donner Laboratory, at the Northeast corner of the Berkeley Campus that was dedicated in 1942.

John Lawrence received the Enrico Fermi Award in 1983. He received honorary degrees from the University of South Dakota, University of Bordeaux and from the Catholic University of America. He was awarded the Caldwell Medal of the American Roentgen Ray Society; the MacKenzie Davidson Medal of the British Institute of Radiology ; a medal from Pope Pius XII; the Silver Medal of the University of Bordeaux; the Silver Cross of the Greek Royal Order of the Phoenix and the Pasteur Medal of the Pasteur Institute of Paris.

Biography

• Radioisotopes and Radiation: Recent Advances in Medicine, Agriculture, and Industry (1969) ISBN 0-486-62301-7
• Recent Advances in Nuclear Medicine, Vol. 5 (1978) ISBN 0-8089-1068-X

External links

• Guide to the John Hundale Lawrence Papers at The Bancroft Library