Alderson Reporting Company
The caption sheet is the printed stationery of the Alderson Reporting Company, official reporters, of 306 Ninth Street N.W., Washington. The Commission convened the conference.
AEC Biophysics Conference, January 1955
1955-01-18 · 197 source pages
Human samples were Sunshine's most important gap, Commissioner Libby told the 1955 Biophysics Conference: anyone who could do a good job of body snatching would be serving their country.
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Publisher annotations
Commentary by The Declassified Collection, separate from the original source.
Source PDF page 1 · 2 notes
Copy control and release markings
The head block records 196 pages, copy one of two, Series A. A National Archives stamp at the foot cancels the classification under Executive Order 12356 in March 1995.
Source PDF page 2 · 2 notes
The appearance list
Thirty names open the record: Commission staff, and men from the Weather Bureau, Agriculture, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, RAND, Sandia, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and Columbia.
W. F. Libby
Willard Frank Libby, radiochemist of the University of Chicago, became an Atomic Energy Commissioner on 1 October 1954. He won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and died in 1980.
Source PDF page 3 · 2 notes
Dr. John C. Bugher
John C. Bugher, physician and pathologist, directed the Commission's Division of Biology and Medicine and takes the chair. He left in 1955 for the Rockefeller Foundation.
Gabriel-Sunshine; the Castle series
Gabriel was the Commission's study of the worldwide fission-product hazard; Sunshine measured it. Castle was the Pacific test series of spring 1954. This leaf carries no folio.
Source PDF page 7 · 2 notes
Folios 3 to 5 not reproduced
Three leaves are omitted before this one. They carry the rest of Dr. Bugher's opening remarks, which run on to the head of this leaf, where the sentence resumes without a speaker label.
Commissioner Libby's first turn
Libby had been three months in office. The stenographer heads his turns COMMISSIONER LIBBY. He sets out the project's standing and the gaps in its data.
Source PDF page 8 · 2 notes
Libby, unlabelled continuation
The leaf opens mid-sentence with no speaker label; the turn is Commissioner Libby's. He explains why the measurement requires the young rather than adults, and what the project had been receiving.
Sunshine Unit; tolerance
A Sunshine Unit is one picocurie of strontium-90 per gram of calcium. The fractions on this leaf are given against tolerance, the maximum permissible body burden then in use, not against the unit.
Source PDF page 9 · 2 notes
Dr. Bugher
Bugher, the division's director, interrupts with a one-line answer and Libby resumes. He had come to the Commission from the Rockefeller Foundation, whose yellow-fever work he cites later.
The ocean gap
Libby turns from the adequacy of small bone samples to a second gap: no one had measured strontium-90 in ocean water. He reports a Chicago result on how deep and how fast the oceans mix.
Source PDF page 13 · 2 notes
Folios 9 to 11 not reproduced
Three leaves are omitted before this one. They carry Commissioner Libby on tritium in ocean water and rain, on ocean mixing, and on fission-product disposal at sea.
Project Sunshine at RAND, 1953
Libby, still speaking, dates the project to a RAND Corporation summer study in 1953, and refers to a law firm's compendium on the law governing the taking of bodies, obtained for that study.
Source PDF page 17 · 2 notes
Folios 13 to 15 not reproduced
Three leaves are omitted before this one. They carry the discussion that follows Commissioner Libby's opening statement and leads into Dr. Kulp's account of what his laboratory had collected and measured.
Dr. J. Laurence Kulp
J. Laurence Kulp (1921-2006), geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory, set on the appearance leaf as J. LAWRENCE KULP. He later went to Weyerhaeuser.
Source PDF page 18 · 2 notes
Dr. Wechsler, U.S. Weather Bureau
The appearance leaf gives H. Wechsler of the Weather Bureau. This leaf spells the name three ways, WESCHLER at his first turn and WECHSLER at the next two. The record does not settle the man.
Merril Eisenbud
Merril Eisenbud (1915-1997) directed the Commission's Health and Safety Laboratory at the New York Operations Office, which measured fallout. He later taught at New York University.
Source PDF page 82 · 2 notes
Folios 18 to 80 not reproduced
Sixty-three leaves are omitted before this one, most of the day's earlier sessions. The extract resumes inside Dr. Kulp's report, which begins on the preceding folio and runs unbroken across this leaf.
Dr. Kulp's tabulation
Kulp reads out measured values, each with its error, for individuals by age, sex and city, drawn from New York and Houston, and describes how the material reached him.
Source PDF page 84 · 2 notes
Folio 82 not reproduced
One leaf is omitted before this one. It continues the same tabulation of measured values by city and age, and carries a short exchange with Dr. Mitchell of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project.
Dean of the Columbia Medical School
Kulp reports approaching the dean of Columbia's medical school about extending the same collection to Australia, South America, Africa, the Near East and Scandinavia.
Source PDF page 187 · 2 notes
Folios 84 to 185 not reproduced
A hundred and two leaves are omitted before this one, the rest of the day's sessions. The extract resumes near the close, where the conference returns to how human material is to be obtained.
Lyle T. Alexander
Lyle T. Alexander (1905-1983), soil chemist at the Agriculture Department's Beltsville laboratories and later chief of its Soil Survey Laboratories, opens the leaf.
Source PDF page 188 · 2 notes
Declassification of Project Sunshine
Dr. John C. Bugher, director of the Division of Biology and Medicine, tells the room the Commission hopes to declassify the existence and objectives of Project Sunshine.
Q clearance and L clearance
Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 an L clearance gave restricted-data access on a preliminary check, short of the full Q. Bugher raises it for hospital directors and pathologists.
Source PDF page 197 · 2 notes
Folios 188 to 195 not reproduced
Eight leaves are omitted before this one. They carry the last of the discussion on obtaining human material abroad, Dr. Bugher on paying local collectors, and closing remarks from Dr. Claus of the division.
Adjournment, 5:35 p.m.
Dr. Bugher thanks the room and the conference closes at 5:35 p.m., having convened at nine that morning. This is folio 196, the last leaf of the record and the count declared on the caption sheet.