| Author | Message | ||
     Barbara Real Name Username: Blh Post Number: 376 Registered: 5-2001 |
This is another of those, "Wow, interesting people live in Maplewood/South Orange" moments. I get Google alerts whenever MSO is in the news (music issue is generating lots of hits these days, but that's for another thread..) but sometimes (actually pretty often) I'll get a link to an obit about a fascinating person who lived some part of their life in South Orange and/or Maplewood. Its really amazing. L. S. Taylor, Scientist, Dies at 102 By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: December 2, 2004 WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Lauriston S. Taylor, who helped to establish the first national standard for X-ray exposure in the 1920's and led a series of government and independent organizations over the next 50 years that set radiation exposure standards for workers and the public, died on Nov. 26 in Mitchellville, Md. He was 102. His son Nelson W. Taylor said that doctors had attributed his father's death to end-stage Alzheimer's disease but that he believed it was complications of pneumonia. Dr. Taylor's career in radiation science covered most of the nuclear age. He joined the National Bureau of Standards in 1927. He retired in 1977 as the president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, which sets the standards used by government agencies and industry. He remained active in debates about the health effects of radiation when he was in his late 80's, often arguing publicly that small doses were not important. He testified to that effect in several court cases, and according to a biographical sketch prepared by Mr. Taylor and two radiation experts, Dr. Taylor said he had been accidentally exposed to a large dose of X-ray energy in a 1929 accident and had received radiation as a treatment for bursitis and other conditions, and estimated his total dose at more than 1,000 rem. It would take about 300 years for most Americans to be exposed to that much radiation from natural sources. The limit for industrial workers is 5 rem a year. Dr. Taylor was born in Brooklyn, on June 1, 1902, but the family soon moved to Maplewood, N.J. According to the biographical sketch, as a grade school student, he visited Thomas A. Edison in his laboratory in nearby South Orange, and Edison gave him an X-ray tube. In the course of a career that began with radiation from X-rays and moved on to other forms, Dr. Taylor wrote more than 150 scientific papers, and part or all of 16 books. "He was really one of the leading scientists in radiation health protection of the 20th century," said Thomas S. Tenforde, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection. Early in his career, Dr. Taylor, known as Laurie, built instruments for measuring X-rays and for calibrating other devices, and is credited by the Health Physics Society with being the first to build a portable radiation survey meter, around 1929. In World War II he was a scientific adviser and chief of a research division in the Army Air Corps. As head of the X-ray group at the National Bureau of Standards, a part of the Department of Commerce that was the forerunner of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dr. Taylor was one of the American delegates at several major international conferences, and later became secretary of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Dr. Taylor's first wife, Azulah Walker, died in 1972 after 48 years of marriage. He is survived by his second wife, Robeana, the widow of his youngest brother, whom he married in 1973; his son Nelson, of Pensacola, Fla.; four stepdaughters, Christine O'Shiell of Hilton Head Island, S.C.; Carolyn Arthur of Woodlawn, Calif.; and Cynthia Nagle and Constance Taylor, both of Erie, Pa.; 18 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren; and two great-great grandchildren. Another son, Lauriston Sale Taylor Jr., died in 1992. |
