Fw: Father of Health Physics

In several of your recent postings to RadSafe you make reference to KZ Morgan as the 'father of health physics'. While Karl Morgan did indeed do much to advance the science and profession of health physics, and has been identified as the 'father of health physics' by some. He was, in fact, not the first person to be called by the title health physicist (I believe EA Wollan at Oak Ridge has that distinction) and was a relatively late entry into the radiation safety area, having started in professional life as a cosmic ray physicist. Others from the Manahattan District days, including the late HM Parker, might have equal or even better claim to recognition as 'father of health physics'. If one recognizes that although the name health physics grew out of the Manhattan District, there were persons whose professional life was devoted to what we now call health physics. These pre-Manhattan District scientists are, in my view, much more deserving of the honor of being named 'father of health physics', and include a number of Americans: Lauriston Taylor, who was involved in the formation of what is now the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements as far back as 1929 and pioneered the development of radiation protection standards; Robley Evans, who did pioneering work with the radium dial painters in the 1930's and played a key role in establishing the early safety standards for working with radium; Dale Trout, whose radiation protection career spanned many decades and who produced seminal works in the x-ray protection area; and my own personal favorite, William Rollins, who by 1902, had fully elucidated the basic principles of x-ray and radium protection and whose prescient recommendations too many years to be implemented. With all due respect to the enormous contributions of my late friend Karl Morgan to the profession in which we both labored for most of our professional lifetimes, health physics did not spring up over night nor was it his brain child. Rather the profession of health physics as we know it today was built from the thoughts and ideas of these early protection pioneers who lacked the resources (and especially governmental funding) available to Karl Morgan and to his colleagues, notably Elda Anderson, to whom (among others) credit is due for building on and expanding what had already been started, and for developing health physics into a recognized professional discipline of its own.