After joining the MIT faculty, he established the Radioactivity Center and developed the meter arc method of measuring the amount of radium in the body as indicated by gamma radiation-a method still considered the most reliable and often referred to as the "Evans method." Professor Evans began his studies of the biological effects while a National Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Once in the body, it usually became concentrated in the bones, continuing to emit potentially dangerous radiation and often causing cancer or creating a skeletal condition that resulted in spontaneous fractures. Radium had also been used indiscriminately in tonics and other medical application in the belief that it was close to a cure-all and it had been handled carelessly by people in industry. The painters of luminous watch dials in factories had made a practice of pointing their brushes with their lips and thus ingested radium. With this experience, he gave special attention to the victims of radium poisoning, a national scandal in the twenties. Millikan) was to measure background radiation coming from the earth, so that it could be distinguished from cosmic radiation. It was at the California Institute of Technology, as a graduate student in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that Professor Evans's task for his doctoral thesis (under Nobel laureate Robert A. He has had a unique impact on radiation biology." The DOE added that Professor Evans, as a founder of nuclear medicine, "occupies a special place in the history of radiation physics and biology and the development of our understanding of radiation effects today. The award honors the memory of Enrico Fermi, the leader of the scientists who achieved the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear reaction. It recognizes "exceptional and altogether outstanding scientific and technical achievement in the development, use or control of atomic energy. The Fermi Award is the highest scientific award given by the DOE. The Department of Energy said in its citation accompanying the Fermi Award, that Professor Evans did pioneering work "in measurements of body burdens of radioactivity and their affects on human health, and in the use of radioactive isotopes for medical purposes." Professor Evans was a founder of nuclear medicine and established the standard, used throughout the world, for the maximum permissible body burden of radium.
His family said the cause of death was respiratory failure. Evans, professor emeritus of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, winner of the 1990 Enrico Fermi Award and a pioneer in studying the effects of radium on the human body, died December 31 in Paradise Valley, AZ, where he lived in retirement. Schaub succumbed to radium poisoning in 1933 at the age of 31.Dr. The universal horror caused by this case contributed to a 1941 bill that made all industrial diseases compensable and extended the time during which workers could discover the illness. This measure occurred too late, according to a two-year statute of limitations, to actually benefit the women who had suffered from radium poisoning. The League campaigned successfully to have radium necrosis recognized as an occupational disease by the State Workmen’s Compensation Board in 1926. Findings demonstrated that the radium Schaub had ingested at work was plated in her bones, causing necroses, joint deterioration, anemia, and cancers from which she and other painters suffered. An investigation made by the Consumers League of New Jersey looked into Schaub’s illness. Although she had two teeth removed to ease the pain, Schaub was plagued by “gloomy” thoughts and bouts of nervousness. In the fall of 1923, Schaub began to have trouble with her teeth. After the war, doctors discovered that these women were dying of anemia and a disease called radium necrosis (radium poisoning)which ate away their jawbones. These women were directed to point up the brushes with their tongues which led to the consequent ingestion of radioactive paint. Radium Corporation in Orange painted luminous numbers on watch faces.
Her death alerted authorities to the dangers of radio-activity.ĭuring World War I, young women employed at the U. Radium Corporation plant in Orange was an early victim of radium poisoning. Katherine Schaub (1902-1933), a watch dial painter at the U.S.
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