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

[Sandy Perle]

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

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.

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.

The findings were contested by the Atomic Energy Commission, and the 
furor made Dr. Gofman a reluctant figurehead of the antinuclear 
movement. In 1970, he testified in favor of a legislative bill to ban 
commercial nuclear reactors in New York City and told the City 
Council that a reactor in urban environs would be "equal in the 
opposite direction to all the medical advances put together in the 
last 25 years." 

Both he and Dr. Tamplin left Livermore in the 1970s, and Dr. Gofman 
went on to become an expert witness in radiation-exposure lawsuits 
and help found an advocacy group, the Committee for Nuclear 
Responsibility, based in San Francisco. In an unsuccessful project, 
he and others called for a five-year federal moratorium on new 
nuclear power stations, citing problems in the safe storage of 
radioactive waste. Yet, for all his efforts as a nuclear gadfly, he 
did not oppose the building of nuclear missiles. 

"Because we live in a dangerous world," he said in 1993, "I think the 
only thing you have is the deterrence value" of such weaponry.

Dr. Gofman´s appearance in the nuclear debate surprised some 
colleagues, since a thrust of his earlier research had been in 
cardiology. In the late 1940s and ´50s, he and his collaborators 
investigated the body´s lipoproteins, which contain both proteins and 
fats, and their circulation within the bloodstream. The researchers 
described low-density and high-density lipoproteins and their roles 
in metabolic disorders and coronary disease.

In his earliest work, while still a graduate student at the 
University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Gofman studied nuclear 
isotopes and helped to describe several discoveries, including 
protactinium-232, uranium-232, protactinium-233 and uranium-233. He 
also helped to work out the fissionability of uranium-233.

John William Gofman was born in Cleveland. He graduated from Oberlin 
College, and received a doctorate in nuclear and physical chemistry 
from Berkeley in 1943. Dr. Gofman went on to earn a medical degree 
from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1946.

He joined Berkeley in 1947 and retired as professor emeritus of 
molecular and cell biology in 1973.

With Egan O´Connor, he wrote a book, "X-Rays: Health Effects of 
Common Exams" (1986). He also wrote "Radiation-Induced Cancer from 
Low-Dose Exposure: An Independent Analysis" (1990).

Dr. Gofman´s wife, Dr. Helen Fahl Gofman, a pediatrician, died in 
2004.

He is survived by a son, Dr. John D. Gofman, an ophthalmologist, of 
Bellevue, Wash.


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Sandy Perle 
President
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2652 McGaw Avenue
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