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Appraisal John W. Gofman Papers Edited for Website11-4-2016

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Appraisal John W. Gofman Papers Edited for Website11-4-2016 Historyofscience.com ▼ Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc. ▼ Historyofinformation.com History of Science, Medicine & Technology ▼ History of Media Rare Books, Manuscripts, Appraisals ▼ P. O. Box 867, Novato, California 94948–0867 Email: [email protected] ▼ Telephone: 415–892–3181 ▼ Fax: 415–276–2317 November 4, 2016 …. Of the many medical and scientific archives that I have appraised during the past forty plus years, the archive of John W. Gofman stands out for his great scientific discoveries, and for his extraordinarily articulate scientific papers, books, speeches, legal testimonies, and interviews on topics concerning large scale health problems in atherosclerosis and heart disease and the carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation. The archive is a major source of primary research material for subjects in which there is extensive political and scholarly interest, including the controversies fought out during his career concerning the safety of nuclear power plants, and the health dangers of exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear fallout and from nuclear power plants, and from plutonium exposure from breeder-reactors. Dr. Gofman also campaigned against excessive exposure to ionizing radiation from unwise radiation therapy treatments, from excessive exposure associated with various diagnostic radiologic procedures, and from fluoroscopy employed during therapeutic procedures. These issues remain of great research interest both the socio-political and scientific points of view. Besides these scientific contributions to important socio-political issues, Gofman’s discoveries of lipids as risk factors in atherosclerosis were probably deserving of the Nobel Prize for medicine, though he never received that award A nuclear/physical chemist as well as a physician, Gofman co-discovered several radioisotopes, including Pa-232, U-232, Pa-233, and U-233 and proof of the slow and fast neutron fissionability of U-233 while working on his PhD dissertation under Glenn Seaborg. He was the third person ever to work with plutonium, and, having devised an early process for separating plutonium from fission products at J. Robert Oppenheimer’s request, Gofman was the first chemist ever to isolate milligram quantities of plutonium, a key component in the atomic bomb. Other topics to which Gofman made very significant contributions included lipoproteins, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease; the ultracentrifugal discovery and analysis of serum lipoproteins, including the identification of LDL, VLDL, and HDL and the discovery of LDL as a measurable risk factor in atherosclerosis. For this great work in 1974 the American College of Cardiology named Gofman as one of the twenty-five leading researchers in the field during the previous quarter-century. Gofman also researched the relationship of human chromosomes to cancer, the biological and medical effects of ionizing radiation, with particular reference to cancer, leukemia, and genetic diseases, and the corresponding need to reduce radiation exposure very 1 significantly from both environmental and medical sources, and the lung-cancer hazard of plutonium. He warned of the extreme danger of the release of plutonium into the environment, the effect of which can last for hundreds of thousands of years. Paralleling his achievements as a scientific investigator, Gofman was an exceptionally able and prolific writer for both technical and popular audiences. The archive contains the manuscripts of many scientific papers, popular essays, and books, including unpublished works. It also contains the manuscripts of many short pieces, including “letters to the editor” which Gofman frequently sent in to newspapers and periodicals. Parenthetically, it should be noted that though Gofman was an outspoken advocate for minimizing exposure to unnecessary ionizing radiation, and therefore opposed the construction of new nuclear reactors, he always supported the continuing development of nuclear weapons. At the time of my examination the John W. Gofman papers were stored in approximately 140 large banker’s boxes, all of which I opened and reviewed. The donation comprises perhaps 200,000 or more sheets of paper, including correspondence, manuscripts of Dr. Gofman’s many published books and papers, as well as the manuscripts of three unpublished books by Dr. Gofman, offprints of many of his scientific papers, scrapbooks documenting his work on lipids, laboratory notebooks for his discoveries relating to the Manhattan Project, clippings of the many newspaper and magazine articles written about him and his work, many publications and mailings issued by Gofman’s Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, and CDs of audio recordings of Dr. Gofman’s many radio interviews, as well as hundreds of photographs. There are also publicity pieces for Gofman’s many books, and copies of the books themselves as well as a few books inscribed to Gofman by the authors such as Glenn T. Seaborg, Linus Pauling and Studs Terkel. Copies of papers and drafts in the archive include a great deal of material that is preserved nowhere else. Unpublished correspondence in the archive fills 40 or more banker’s boxes. I also understand that the archive includes 44 video cassettes of indeterminate length, some perhaps quite short, and others lasting an hour of more from videos of speeches and television interviews with Dr. Gofman. These I understand will be included in the donation after they have been converted from videocassettes to DVDs. The video material was not available for my examination when I visited. I did see printed transcripts of several television interviews of Dr. Gofman in the archive. Besides the huge amount of high research value content, the Gofman archive is also of interest because its most significant written components were recorded before the year 2000, and are thus nearly all on paper rather than in the form of emails. Furthermore Dr. Gofman wrote many of his first drafts of his many writings in a most remarkably legible longhand. As a result, the archive is a kind of period piece reflective of the old-style of writing before the explosion of personal computing and the Internet. Because of the size of this archive, and the limited time available, there was no way to provide even a basic inventory of the material involved while preparing this appraisal. Besides this aspect, Gofman’s medical and scientific career was unusually complex. In order to describe the unique historical significance of the archive it was necessary to outline Dr. Gofman’s exceptionally technical and varied scientific career in the context of the socio- 2 political environment of his time. This I decided to do through a chronological outline of Dr. Gofman’s most significant achievements and key publications in the context of certain relevant political/scientific developments. Within this timeline I have noted certain archival items that I found especially notable. After that I have stated my qualifications as an appraiser, and provided a statement of my appraisal methodology and establishment of the fair market value of the archive. I have also included a list of published references that I consulted in the process of preparing this appraisal. John William Gofman: Timeline of Significant Events, Discoveries and Publications 1918. Birth 1939. Gofman graduated with a B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College 1941-43. Gofman was Group Co-Leader of the Plutonium Project (for the Manhattan Project) at the University of California, Berkeley. This work included meetings at Chicago and Oak Ridge and meetings in Berkeley with J. Robert Oppenheimer from Los Alamos, to exchange information and to help DuPont engineers prepare for the reprocessing operations at Hanford, Washington in order to build the first atomic bombs. The archive contains copies of Gofman’s very early and very rare physics publications with his teacher Glenn Seaborg dating from as early as 1941, as well as other related publications. 1943. Gofman received his PhD in Nuclear/Physical Chemistry from University of California Berkeley. Dissertation: Discovery of Pa-232, U-232, Pa-233, and U-233. Proof of the slow and fast neutron fissionability of U-233. Discovery of the 4n + 1 radioactive series. Gofman’s thesis supervisor, Glenn T. Seaborg, considered Gofman one of the most brilliant of all of his students. Gofman’s dissertation, of which a copy is in the archive, was perhaps one of the most brilliant and original PhD theses ever produced in the UC Berkeley physics department. The archive contains 1943 correspondence with physicists at Los Alamos (confidential) concerning physics experiments at Los Alamos and at Gilman Hall, Berkeley where Gofman was working. The archive also includes a laboratory notebook of Gofman’s work at UC Berkeley dated March-April 1944. This notebook was originally classified, but was later de-classified. There are also 4 spiral bound laboratory notebooks from this period that were not classified. As a result of his PhD work Gofman shared in the following patents: 3 n° 3,123,535 (Glenn T. Seaborg, John W. Gofman, Raymond W. Stoughton): The slow and fast neutron fissionability of uranium-233, with its application to production of nuclear power or nuclear weapons. n° 2,671,251 (John W. Gofman, Robert E. Connick, Arthur C. Wahl): The sodium uranyl acetate process for the separation of plutonium in irradiated fuel from uranium and fission products. n° 2,912,302 (Robert E. Connick, John W. Gofman, George C. Pimentel): The columbium oxide process for the separation of plutonium in irradiated fuel from uranium and fission products. 1945, July 16. The first atomic bomb was exploded at the Trinity Site at the Almagordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico. 1945, August 6 and 9. The United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1946. Gofman received his M.D. from the School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Upon graduation Gofman was the winner of the Gold Headed-Cane Award, a high honor for the graduate who showed a passion for patient care, academic excellence and community service.
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