Oral Histories
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DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments: Roadmap to the Project Oral Histories |
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Oral Histories
Medical Physicist Kathering L. Lathrop and Physician Paul V. Harper
Foreword Lathrop's Education and Early Career (Manhattan Project, 1945-46) Lathrop's Work at Argonne National Laboratory (1947-54) Lathrop's Work as a Chemist at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital (Beginning in 1954) Harper's Education and Early Career (1940s to Early '50s) Harper's Thoughts on the Mixture of Medicine and Science (Late '40s and '50s) Lathrop's Early Cancer Therapy Research Harper's Early Determinations of Radiation Doses Development of Iodine-125 Production Methods and the AEC Review Process Discussion of Radiation Research Standards Lathrop and Harper Collaborative Research (1965-67) Various Radioactive Isotope Research by Lathrop and Harper Argonne Cancer Research Hospital History (Early '70s) Research on Brain Tumor Imaging Agents Collaborative Metabolic Studies Selenium Tumor-Imaging Studies (Early '70s) Alpha Emitter Studies Using Radioactive Isotopes Difficulties Involved With Using Human Volunteers
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DOE/EH-0472 HUMAN RADIATION STUDIES:
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Lathrop's Education and Early Career (Manhattan Project, 1945–46) | |
| FISHER: | This is an interview with Dr. Paul V. Harper and Mrs. Katherine Lathrop of the University of Chicago, taking place at the University of Chicago Hospital. My name is Dr. Darrell Fisher; I'm here with Mr. Michael Yuffee to conduct this interview. Katherine, maybe we could start with you and ask you to tell us, in as much detail as you would like, how you became interested in the field of nuclear medicine,1 how you became affiliated with the University of Chicago, a little about your education, and your professional career. |
| LATHROP: | There was [no field of Nuclear Medicine in which to become interested]. I was there when it started. There was a Society of Nuclear Medicine that had been formed. [Around 1954 to '55, small groups of interested people began meeting in Chicago and on the West Coast.] |
| HARPER: | There were only half-dozen or so [people involved]. |
| LATHROP: | It was mainly people using iodine-1312 to [treat] thyroid3 disease. [By 1960 the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the Journal of Nuclear Medicine were started.] |
| FISHER: | You weren't a native of Chicago. You went to school in Oklahoma. |
| LATHROP: | That's right. |
| FISHER: | Would you tell us a little about this? |
| LATHROP: | I was born in Oklahoma. |
| FISHER: | 1915? |
| LATHROP: | That's right. (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for clarity and accuracy:) My maternal grandparents moved from Iowa to Indian Territory in 1902, when my mother was about ten years old.] My father's family [moved from Texas to Oklahoma Territory a few years earlier. The two territories were combined into the state of Oklahoma in 1907. At one time the two families lived within a few miles, although in separate territories. My parents were married in Lawton, Oklahoma, in 1912. I was there first child. I was married in Lawton in 1938, while a graduate student at Oklahoma State University. My husband was from New Mexico, where we lived from 1939 until early 1942, when we moved to Laramie, Wyoming. I worked in the poisonous plant laboratory at the University of Wyoming, replacing personnel drafted for military service. My husband taught Chemistry to students enlisted in the military service. Similar programs were available in medical schools leading to an M.D. degree. My husband applied and was admitted as a student at Northwestern University [in Evanston, a northern suburb of Chicago]. We moved to Chicago in 1944. We thought that we had enough money from the sale of our house and savings. However, living in Chicago cost much more than living in Laramie. One of my husband's friends told us about [a very secret project, where he had worked before entering medical school, that had jobs for people trained in scientific fields. I applied by mail. A short time later I was asked to appear for a personal interview and was hired the same day.] The person who [interviewed] me thought I would fit in well within the chemistry or the biology sections of the [Manhattan] Project.4 He tried calling someone in [the] Chemistry [Division, who was not there. He then reached someone] in [the] Biology [Division], and I went [at once] for an interview. As I look back [to that day, I feel it was decisive for my subsequent career. Only because of a turn of fate,] I could have gone on in[to] straight chemistry, but [my experience in determining the quantitative localization and biologic effects of fission was valuable preparation for some of the contributions I was able to make to the development of Nuclear Medicine.] |
| FISHER: | Who were the people that interviewed you for these important decisionmaking opportunities? |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) I don't really remember. Possibly I talked with one or more of these people: Drs. Prosser,5 Austin Brues,6 Herman Lisco, Kenneth Cole at the biology section. These were top people in directing the research. Dr. Ray Finkle was head of the group I worked in. Dr. David Anthony was my immediate supervisor until about the time the Manhattan Project became the Argonne National Laboratory. |
| HARPER: | At one point you actually got interviewed by General [Leslie] Groves.7 |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) I'm not really sure about that. The entire day was rather overwhelming to me. I was definitely interviewed by someone in Army uniform, and one of the office personnel said I was being taken to General Groves's office. The original project was, as you know, established under the military. Some enlisted people in Army uniform were working along with civilians, in the laboratories, doing the same work. Having grown up next-door to Fort Sill (Oklahoma), where I daily saw, on the streets of Lawton, men of all ranks on uniform, the military was just part of the background, and did not impress me. The same was true for Indians. |
| FISHER: | This was your first introduction to the Metallurgical Laboratory8 of the Manhattan Project. |
| LATHROP: | That's right. |
| FISHER: | How long did you work in the Met Lab? |
| LATHROP: | I worked there until it became the Argonne National Laboratory.9 And then I worked in the Argonne National Laboratory for a few years. |
| FISHER: | What work did you do in the Met Lab? |
| LATHROP: | Animal distribution studies[: studies on the biological uptake,10 retention, tissue distribution, and excretion of radioactive materials]. |
| FISHER: | On which kinds of materials? |
| LATHROP: | Radium,11 because radium was the radioactive material that there was some information about [its effects] in humans. |
| FISHER: | Okay. Did you do any toxicity studies12 with any other radioactive materials? |
| LATHROP: | With fission products.13 |
| FISHER: | Fission products, also? |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) Yes. I learned the first day I came to work in the biology section (site B). It was located on University Avenue, about three blocks south of where we are sitting today, in a building that formerly served as a brewery and another time as a stable, with labs partitioned off with cardboard. Dave Anthony said, "I think it would be best for you to read for a few weeks in order to learn something about the work we are doing." He took me upstairs to a room, maybe 15 by 30 feet, lined with bookshelves holding about six books. There was a door like those used on the safety deposit room in a bank that, I learned later, was a depository for classified documents from the various sites working on the bomb project. An attendant sat at a desk to check out documents requested from the "vault." She never seemed very busy and I wondered how many trashy novels, or Great Books,14 she read per month. The books on the shelf were those published about radioactivity since Becquerel's great discovery. The professor who served as advisor for my Master's thesis had given me a copy of Eve Curie's biography of her mother,15 which I had read several times. Of course, I knew very little about the various types of radiation, but the work I saw going on around me seemed mostly to involve handling animals. In high school I had chosen Chemistry and Physics for science because I wanted nothing to do with the cats being dissected in Biology. Faced with earning enough money to care for my two children and get my husband through medical school, I quickly decided I could learn to work with animals. I had taken a nonlaboratory Anatomy class in college. Dave told me we were working on some radioactive explosive material that might win the war for the Allies. He solemnly asked me to tell no one what I was working on, not even my family. I never did until after the bomb was dropped. |
| FISHER: | Well, it was a very tightly kept secret. |
| LATHROP: | Yes, but everybody in the [research] community knew that the project was here. But they didn't know what it was [about]. |
| HARPER: | Yes. My father was a trustee of the University [of Chicago] at the time. He mentioned there was something big going on, but he didn't say anything about any of the details. I don't know how much he knew [about the Manhattan Project research]. |
| FISHER: | Paul, was your father aware of the work by [Enrico] Fermi?16 |
| HARPER: | I doubt it. He wasn't a scientist. |
| LATHROP: | He was a lawyer. (laughter) |
| FISHER: | [Did] you have discussions with him about the construction of the [nuclear] reactor [(the first reactor under the west stands of the stadium at the University of Chicago)]? |
| HARPER: | No, he just mentioned in a vague way that there was something big and secret going on. That's all, nothing further. |
| YUFFEE: | Is it your guess, then, that, for the most part, only a handful of university administrat[ors] might have known the real details of what was going on? |
| HARPER: | I have no way of knowing. |
| FISHER: | Anyway, Katherine, at some point, you became more interested in and more active in the biochemistry and medical aspects of radiation, and you didn't stay with the Manhattan Project forever. Of course, it ended at some point. Would you like to tell us how your work evolved from the Manhattan Project into the work of the [Argonne Cancer Research] Hospital?17 |
Lathrop's Work at Argonne National Laboratory (1947–54) | |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) After the Manhattan became the Argonne National Laboratory, the biology section continued to function at Site B for several years until new facilities were constructed near Lemont, Illinois. I was assigned to the group doing radium studies. One of the people working with the group was Bill Neal,18 who had been discharged from active duty with the Navy and was waiting to begin a residency in surgery at the University of Chicago. While at the university he contacted me about a possible job with J. Garrott Allen,19 a surgeon who also was on the staff of ANL. Bill knew I was dissatisfied with my group leader at Site B. It was arranged for me to transfer to the hospital, but remain as an ANL personnel. Bill Neal and Paul Harper had a research project in a lab across the hall from me. I became friends with Georgiana, the technician helping them. The four of us often ate lunch together in their lab. I continued to work at the university until physical facilities for the ANL Biology Division were nearing completion. The decision was made that ANL would no longer support personnel offsite. Dr. Allen wanted me to remain with him, but was unable to find salary support. I returned to Site B, where I did perfusion studies with radioactive materials in excised dog organs until the move, around 1950, to the ANL site. In November of 1952 my fifth child was born. (Incidentally, I am sometimes asked how I felt about working with radioactivity while pregnant. My answer is: I believed I was working in safe conditions. I have two controls [(two children born before their mother's participation in radiation research)], three experimentals [(children born during their mother's participation in radiation research)], and ten grandchildren, all healthy and intelligent. |
Lathrop's Work as a Chemist at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital (Beginning in 1954) | |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) I began to find the two-hour drive to and back from ANL with the business of being a long-distance mother and not being able to return home quickly in the event of an emergency, more stressful than I liked. While I was looking for work closer to my home, located two blocks from the University of Chicago campus, Dr. Harper and I happened to meet on the street. He told me that construction of the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital, attached to the other buildings of the medical complex, had just been completed, and he had been given space and funding. He asked if I would be interested. I decided to try it, although the salary was about half of that I was paid at ANL. We began working together in February 1954.I remember that Julie[, one of my children,] was not quite two years old. |
| FISHER: | In your résumé, it says that, in 1954, you were a biochemist at the University of Chicago. |
| LATHROP: | That was my official title. |
| HARPER: | That's when you were in the Department of Surgery. |
| LATHROP: | That's right. That was the first title I had. |
| YUFFEE: | I have a question in regard to your experience up until that point. I think it's interesting to note that, through trying to research the early days of nuclear science, nuclear medicine, there weren't very many women involved in the research aspects. What was it like being one of a very few number of women involved a male-dominated profession? |
| LATHROP: | Well, as a matter of fact— |
| HARPER: | I didn't think it was male-dominated. |
| LATHROP: | (material deleted. Mrs. Lathrop inserts the following for
clarity and accuracy:) I believe Dr. Harper really believes his statement. I think both of us may have come from families where males and females were equally valued. I have read that Paul's grandfather hired female faculty and welcomed female students when he established the University of Chicago in the 1890s. Although I grew limited to being a wife and mother, or an old maid school teacher, my parents treated each other and me as equals, so I never thought of myself as inferior to my male contemporaries. Besides, I always made better grades than the boys. On entering college, I enrolled in the school of Home Economics. I believe this training better prepared me for coping with my subsequent roles of working mother and homemaker. I was led into chemistry through a class in textile chemistry, required of all students in the course I was pursuing. The professor, a woman, was highly impressed with the required notebook I handed in at the ended of the semester. She was taking a sabbatical the next year and, since no one in the department wanted or felt qualified to teach textile chemistry, she suggested me. I had a great time with the course, learned to know the chemistry staff, became interested in graduate study in chemistry, and was asked if I would be a graduate teaching assistant while pursuing a master's degree. Again, I had found equal treatment. |
| YUFFEE: | Sure. |
| LATHROP: | But I would say that there were more women there [at ANL in Lemont] than there were when I came over here [to the Cancer Research Hospital, back from ANL, in 1954]. |
