DOI: 10.1097/HP.0b013e3181a8cbe4
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Issn Print: 0017-9078
Publication Date: 2009/08/01
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Excerpt
Herman's educational development and academic career are indicative of his broad interests and outstanding intellectual abilities. During World War II he tried to join the Army but was rejected for minor physical problems. He got a job as an apprentice machinist, working his way up to plant manager while attending night school where after eight years of study he earned a degree in electrical engineering, cum laude, from City College of New York in 1949. During his senior year, he finished his final exam in thermodynamics in half the time allotted, using the unused time to explore the City College campus during the day. This was fortuitous, because he noticed a flier for the “AEC-NRC Fellowship in Radiological Physics,” on a bulletin board and decided to apply, having been interested in medicine and radiology. He took the required exam for the Fellowship and joined one of us (AB) in Elda Anderson's first class, 1949–1950, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In the evenings, we students were allowed to take additional classes. So while I and others labored through courses in mathematics, Herman could be found in a laboratory dissecting grasshopper embryos in his study of their sensitivities to radiation.
Herman's academic career began immediately after finishing his Fellowship. Elda Anderson, well aware of Herman's outstanding intellectual and communication skills, prevailed upon him to accept a position as both Radiation Safety Officer and research associate at the newly established Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), University of Pittsburgh. The dean, former Surgeon General Thomas Parran, had a special interest in radiological health because his wife had undergone radiation therapy for cancer, and so fully supported Herman's endeavors. Thus, in the fall of 1950, Herman began both his own research and the first graduate health physics program not supported by the Federal government, working closely with the notable radiobiologist Joseph A. Watson and radiological physicist Morton Heller. He also served simultaneously as Radiation Safety Officer for the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University).
The indefatigable Herman also continued his studies in the evenings, earning both his M.S. (1952) and Ph.D. (1960) in biophysics from the Graduate School. After a decade at Pitt, during which he had obtained a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to expand the health physics teaching program, he accepted a tenured associate professorship at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and then, in 1964, he accepted a promotion to full Professor at Northwestern University.
At Northwestern, he built a program in health physics, industrial hygiene, and environmental health within the Civil Engineering Department. He served as consultant to many organizations and industries, and was involved in radiation therapy calibrations at nearby medical institutions, which helped him feed current practice problems to his students. He continued his research and taught courses in health physics, industrial hygiene, radiation biology, and environmental health.
