14 Facts About John Gofman

John William Gofman was an American scientist and advocate.

John Gofman was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley.

John Gofman advocated for the adoption of the Linear No-Threshold model as a means of estimating actual cancer risks from low-level radiation and as the foundation of the international guidelines for radiation protection.

John Gofman codiscovered several radioisotopes, notably uranium-233 and its fissionability; 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, he was the first chemist ever to try and isolate milligram quantities of plutonium.

In 1963 John Gofman established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he researched the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer.

John Gofman was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "his pioneering work in exposing the health effects of low-level radiation" on the Chernobyl disaster's area population.

John Gofman graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's in chemistry in 1939, and received a doctorate in nuclear and physical chemistry from Berkeley in 1943, where he worked as a graduate student under Glenn T Seaborg.

John Gofman later became the group co-leader of the Plutonium Project, an offshoot of the Manhattan Project.

Dr John Gofman earned his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1946.

At the request of Ernest Lawrence, John Gofman established the Medical Department at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in early 1954 and acted as the medical director until 1957.

John Gofman retired as a teaching professor in 1973 and became a professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology.

John Gofman used his low-level radiation health model to predict 333 excess cancer or leukemia deaths from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Three months after the Chernobyl disaster, John Gofman predicted that Chernobyl would cause "475,000 fatal cancers plus about an equal number of additional non-fatal cases, occurring over time both inside and outside the ex-Soviet Union".

John Gofman was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Jewish parents, David and Sarah John Gofman, who immigrated to the US from the Russian Empire in about 1905.