In Memoriam: Lauriston S. Taylor
1902-2004
by Nelson W. Taylor, Warren K. Sinclair, and Robert O. Gorson
Dr.
Lauriston S. Taylor, president of the Health Physics Society (HPS) from
1958 to 1959, died peacefully in his sleep on 26 November 2004 in
Mitchellville, Maryland. He was 102.
In June 2002, in honor of Dr. Taylor's 100th birthday, special issues of the journal Health Physics and the HPS Newsletter were dedicated to Past President Taylor.
The June 2002 Health Physics cover (see page 14) featured an
oil painting of Taylor by HPS Fellow Kenneth L. Miller. The issue
included editorials of appreciation for Taylor's pioneer work in the
field of radiation protection and reprints of several of Taylor's
significant publications. A listing of all of Taylor's Health Physics
publications was also provided.
The June 2002 Newsletter cover story presented highlights of Taylor's life, letters from his friends and colleagues honoring him on his 100th birthday, and historic photos of his life.
On the occasion of Taylor's 100th birthday,
Senator Pete V. Domenici rose in the United States Senate to pay
tribute to a “truly great American,” an honor duly recorded in the 5
June 2002 Congressional Record.
Taylor (or Laurie as he was called by his friends and colleagues)
was born in Brooklyn, but his family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey,
soon after his birth. Taylor's attraction to science began in early
childhood since his father was a metallurgist who had a broad interest
in physics, chemistry, engineering, mining, geology, and botany. Both
parents encouraged his reading and hard study from his earliest years.
It was particularly exciting for Taylor as a grade school student to
visit Thomas Edison in his laboratory. When the young Taylor expressed
an interest in vacuum tubes, Edison promptly gave him a cold-cathode
x-ray tube. Taylor's father forbade his son from experimenting with the
x-ray tube for his dad had already heard about the dangers of x-ray
exposure.
While a young boy, Taylor explored wireless telegraphy and later
became a licensed amateur radio operator. His first love, however, was
plumbing. He often walked the 3½ miles to school to save the nickel
carfare to buy plumbing tools. He studied his father's college physics
text to learn about electronics. As a junior in high school during
World War I, Taylor proposed a method to help troops penetrate
barbed-wire entanglements using 75mm shells. The War Department's
rejection of the idea as not feasible did not deter Taylor's later
endeavors to serve his country in military oversight operations during
World War II.
Taylor attended Stevens Institute for a year to study engineering
but had to drop out to earn money for tuition. He worked for a year at
the Bell Laboratories, where his interest in electronics led to his
decision to drop engineering at Stevens and to enroll in physics at
Cornell University. There he completed the requirements for a doctorate
except for the residency rules. His last year of research was in x-ray
crystal structure, electronics, and x-ray absorption spectra. One of
his professors directed him to what was supposed to be a one-year
position in x-ray work relating to radiology at the National Bureau of
Standards (NBS) in Washington, DC. After studying much of the radiology
literature, Taylor spent a week or so at Memorial Center in New York
City with Dr. Gioacchino Failla, who persuaded Taylor of the great need
for radiological physicists. There were only a few in the entire
country at that time. Thus began Taylor's first career, 28 years in
radiation dosimetry and radiation protection at the NBS, now known as
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Taylor
became head of the x-ray group in the atomic physics section and led a
team to organize an x-ray standards program. In 1941 he was made chief
of a new x-ray section and, in 1951, chief of the atomic and radiation
physics division.
In 1928 Taylor was named as one of the two U.S. members of the
predecessor of the International Commission on Radiation Units and
Measurements (ICRU), which had been constituted three years earlier.
Also in 1928, he was one of a small group that organized the forerunner
of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and
was named the official representative of the NBS to that body. Thus, he
was a member of both commissions by the time he reached the tender age
of 26! The next year the National Council on Radiation Protection and
Measurements (NCRP), originally called the U.S. Advisory Committee on X
Ray and Radium Protection, was formed. Taylor was its first chairman.
Taylor continued to be responsible for x-ray standards at the NBS
until 1943. Most of his papers in this period dealt with x-ray
measurements and early radiation protection recommendations. The
“roentgen” had become the official unit of x-ray exposure in 1928 and
established a firm base for x-ray measurements for the first time.
Nevertheless, there were many problems remaining, especially in the
measurement of gamma rays from radium then in wide use in radiotherapy.
Consequently, it was a period of great activity in the measurement
field and these problems were further compounded as super-voltage
radiations entered the scene later in the decade of the 1930s. By the
mid-1930s, the NCRP had already developed the radiation protection
standards that were in place for use by the Atomic Energy Project when
it was born in 1943.
In 1940, with war clouds on the horizon, Taylor was asked by the
National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the NBS director to
organize another totally new program for the development of the
Proximity Fuse for the defense of Britain against the German bomb
attacks. He was put in charge of all field-test and proof operations
and he became assistant director of the greatly expanded program. For
this work he received the Gold Medal of the Department of Commerce.
In the spring of 1943, the United States Army Air Force sought
Taylor's services to organize a program of Operations Research for the
Army Eighth Air Force Fighter Command in England. When Taylor returned
to the States in late 1943 to recruit additional professional
personnel, the 9th Tactical Air Force was just being organized. By the
time of the Normandy invasion, Taylor had put together Operations
Research Programs for the Army Ninth Air Force, its Bomber Command, and
three Tactical Air Commands, and he served as scientific advisor to
Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg. For these services, he received two
Presidential Citations, the Medal of Freedom, and the Bronze Star
(Presidential), then the highest military award that could be given to
a civilian. In 1946 Taylor returned to his real love, radiation
dosimetry, at NBS as the chief of the x-ray section.
Taylor took leave from NBS for a year in 1948-1949 to organize and
serve as chief of the Biophysics Branch in the Division of Biology and
Medicine of the Atomic Energy Division. It was during this period that
he organized “Project Gabriel” to evaluate the long-range implications
of strontium-90 in fallout. In 1962 Taylor became associate director of
NBS, where he remained until his retirement in 1965.
His career, however, was by no means over. He began a new one at
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), where he spent six years as
special assistant to the president of the Academy and as executive
director of the Academy's Advisory Committee on Emergency Planning.
Taylor departed from NAS in 1971 at the mandatory retirement age of
70. Then he devoted essentially all of his energies to the NCRP, whose
structure he had reorganized in 1964, into the now federally chartered
NCRP by an act of the Congress of the United States. With the support
of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, Taylor
accomplished these important changes in status for the NCRP. Taylor was
elected the first president of the new Council, a position he held
until his retirement in 1977.
After his third retirement, Taylor continued to work in his beloved
field of radiation protection for another 21 years, volunteering his
time to the NCRP, writing books, and serving as an expert witness for
the Department of Justice. Over the years he testified before many
congressional committees on issues concerning radiation exposure and
protection standards.
In an interview in 1995, Taylor related how, in 1929, he was
accidentally exposed to a large amount of whole-body radiation from an
x-ray machine at NBS. That exposure in addition to medical radiation
treatment for bursitis and other benign conditions and from radiation
experiments resulted in an estimated whole-body dose-equivalent in
excess of a thousand rem. He experienced no discernible adverse effect.
He related that experience to juries with great effectiveness while
testifying in cases of alleged radiation injury involving small
radiation exposures.
Taylor's career was one of extraordinary diversity. He wrote
or contributed to some 24 books and published well over 160 scientific
papers, most of the first half of these arising out of his laboratory
research on radiation dosimetry, an area in which he commanded the
respect of all of his colleagues and peers. Undoubtedly his most
important legacy to historians (besides hundreds of boxes of records
and artifacts donated to the Countway Library at Harvard University) is
a mammoth tome of 2,000 pages titled Organization for Radiation
Protection, The Operations of the ICRP and NCRP, 1928-1974 (DOE/TIC-10124). Also of great historical interest is his 386-page
document, X-Ray Measurements and Protection, 1913-1964 (NBS Special
Publication 625). He left another valuable legacy in video format.
Under the sponsorship of the former Bureau of Radiological Health, he
conducted interviews from 1977 to 1979 of 27 pioneers in medical
radiological science. One interview was of Taylor himself. Transcripts
were published in 1984 under the title Vignettes of Early Radiation
Workers by the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, U.S. Public
Health Service. More recently (1994 and 1995), two videotaped interviews
of Taylor also were conducted by the American Association of
Physicists in Medicine.
Taylor also was a superb administrator and diplomat who was most
effective in getting scientists from many disciplines to freely
volunteer their time and effort in the production of valuable
scientific reports for the benefit of practitioners in all fields of
radiation usage as well as for the general public. His success at this
was the foundation of no less than 56 reports published by the NCRP
under his tutelage.
Taylor was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1960 and at St. Procopius College (Illinois) in 1965.
He received at least 25 other honors since 1929, ranging from the Gold
Medal of the XIIIth International Congress of Radiology, the Gold Medal
of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1992), the Gold Medal of the
American Roentgen Ray Society to the Distinguished Service Award,
Executive Office of the President, and many others. He received 17
letters of commendation, most of them during his service with the Air
Force.
Taylor was involved in no less than 75 committees of 37
different organizations of amazing diversity, including the American
Medical Association, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Civil Service
Commission, and the International Labor Organization, as well as
scientific peer-review committees at various institutions including
Argonne National Laboratory, where he served an unprecedented three
times. He belonged to 16 scientific societies and served as president
of two.
In 1934 Taylor played an essential role in initiating the
“registration of qualified x-ray physicists” by the Standardization
Committee of the Radiological Society of North America. This initial
program to certify radiological physicists qualified to calibrate
medical x-ray machines was taken over (in a controversial manner) by
the American Board of Radiology (ABR) in 1947. Taylor was certified by
both the ABR and the American Board of Health Physics (ABHP). He served
on the ABHP (1959-1962) and was an examiner for both boards.
In his rich and varied career, nothing was more constant than
Taylor's devotion to the NCRP and his steady development of its
objectives; on the international scene, to the ICRP, on which he served
as secretary from 1937 until 1950, continued as a member until 1969,
and was an emeritus member to his death; and to the ICRU, on which he
served as secretary from 1934 to 1950, chairman from 1953 to 1969, and
honorary chairman and member emeritus, again to his death. In the field
of radiation protection, he was the “man for all seasons” and second to
none. His legacy will live for generations to come.
In addition to his many professional achievements, Taylor was also
a licensed plumber, electrician, and carpenter and a master at
woodwork. These skills he put to good use throughout his life. He
enjoyed hiking and camping along the Appalachian Trail with his sons.
On one such trip they became snowbound for a week.
Lauriston Taylor is survived by his devoted wife, Robeana, of 31
years; by his younger son, Nelson W. Taylor, Sr., and wife, Marilyn,
and their five children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren; by three children and six great-grandchildren of his
oldest son, Lauriston S. Taylor, Jr.; and by Robeana's daughters,
Christine O'Shiell, Carolyn Arthur, Constance Taylor, Cynthia Nagle,
and their children. In total, Laurie is survived by five children, 18
grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife of 48 years,
Azulah Walker Taylor, in 1972 and by his eldest son, Lauriston Sale
Taylor, Jr., in May of 1992.
