24 Facts About Louis Hempelmann

Louis Henry Hempelmann Jr, was an American physician who was the director of the Health Group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.

Louis Hempelmann earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Washington University in St Louis, from which he graduated in 1938.

Louis Hempelmann did his internship in pathology at Barnes Hospital in St Louis, and then his residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

When he returned to the Mallinckrodt Institute, the cyclotron had been completed, but was being used to manufacture plutonium, so instead Louis Hempelmann established a radioactive phosphorus clinic along the lines of Lawrence's one in Berkeley.

In early 1943, Louis Hempelmann was summoned to a meeting in Chicago, where Oppenheimer recruited him to work on the Manhattan Project.

Oppenheimer took the two doctors to see the Los Alamos Laboratory, which was then under construction, in March 1943, and Louis Hempelmann moved there in April 1943, Nolan was commissioned as a captain in the Medical Corps, but Louis Hempelmann remained a civilian.

Louis Hempelmann was a granddaughter of the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, and a graduate of Mary Institute in St Louis.

Louis Hempelmann visited a Boston luminous paint company to see how it was handled in industry.

Louis Hempelmann gave him a mouthwash of trisodium citrate, which would combine with the plutonium to form a soluble liquid, and sodium bicarbonate, which would make it solid again.

Louis Hempelmann used a stomach pump to retrieve plutonium that had been swallowed, recovering about 60 nanograms.

Louis Hempelmann later published a detailed account of these accidents in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Louis Hempelmann was involved in the planning of the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, and handled the safety planning for the 100-ton test that preceded it.

Louis Hempelmann delegated responsibility for the main test to Nolan, but had to take over when Nolan was called away to help transport components of the Little Boy bomb to Tinian.

In 1946 Louis Hempelmann assisted with the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Louis Hempelmann left Los Alamos in 1948, and went to Harvard University as a medical researcher, although he remained a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Louis Hempelmann joined the medical faculty of the University of Rochester in 1950 as an associate professor of Experimental radiology.

Louis Hempelmann came into conflict with the chairman of the Radiology Department over the use of fluoroscopy on infants.

Louis Hempelmann then embarked on a series of studies of children who had been given radiation therapy for thymus enlargement.

In 1952, Louis Hempelmann published a collaborative review of thirty people who had been treated with radium as part of medical treatment, or had ingested radium as radium dial painters.

Louis Hempelmann was the chairman of the Department of Radiology from 1960 to 1971.

Louis Hempelmann initiated innovative studies, such as an attempt to determine if leukaemia or lymphoma could be contracted through blood transfusions.

In 1967 a student at Jefferson Medical College who wanted to study the effects of radiation on the human body was referred to Louis Hempelmann, who suggested a study of women who had received X-ray treatment for acute postpartum mastitis between ten and twenty-five years before.

Louis Hempelmann died on June 21,1993, at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, from complications following a stroke.

Louis Hempelmann's remains were cremated and interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St Louis.