The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by P. R. A.
The girl is rather let down by the rather functional-looking single bed which would be more suited to a dormitory, barracks or hospital.
Although the card was not posted, someone has written a location and date on the divided back:
"Lyon. 21 Novembre 1911."
Roald Amundsen
So what else happened on Tuesday the 21st. November 1911?
Well, on that day, after four days of working their way up the Axel Heiberg Glacier, Roald Amundsen and his party were able to reach the plateau of the Transantarctic Mountains.
Amundsen named the part of the range between the Ross Ice Shelf and the plateau after the reigning Queen Consort of Norway, christening them the Queen Maud Mountains.
Lester Skaggs
The day also marked the birth in Trenton, Missouri of Lester Skaggs.
Lester Skaggs, Ph.D. was a pioneer in the field of medical physics and radiation therapy, a teacher, and innovator.
Lester Skaggs - The Early Years
Skaggs grew up on a farm in northern Missouri. He attended a one-room schoolhouse, and to get to high school, he had to ride three miles on a horse. Skaggs was the oldest of three children, and his father planned for Skaggs to become a farmer.
However Lester had other interests; he loved tinkering, and enjoyed designing and building contraptions. He made plans for a science career, and attended the University of Missouri. There he completed a B.S. in chemistry with a minor in mathematics in 1933, and an M.S. in physics in 1934.
Lester moved to Chicago in 1935, where he entered the graduate program of the University of Chicago in nuclear physics. In 1939, Skaggs was awarded a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.
At the University of Chicago, Skaggs was granted a post-doctoral fellowship in nuclear physics, and he secured part-time work in radiation oncology at the Tumor Clinic of the Michael Reese Hospital.
Lester Skaggs in WWII
From 1941 to 1943, the war effort took Lester to Washington, D.C. where he served at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.
Skaggs worked with physicist Nicholas Smith in order to design an airplane proximity detection system that utilized radio waves to locate and detonate anti-aircraft shells.
In 1943 Lester was sent to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, working under Robert Oppenheimer in order to develop the atomic bomb.
At Los Alamos, Skaggs adapted the anti-aircraft detection system into a failsafe "fuse" for the first bomb that would be used against Japan.
From a distance of 20 miles, Skaggs witnessed the first atomic test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. He immediately saw that the current plans left an unacceptable amount of time for the bombardiers to safely escape from the drop zone.
He accordingly developed a system with two back-up systems that allowed additional time to for the plane and crew to make a secure exit from the skies over Japan.
As Skaggs’ daughter Margaret later remembered:
“He thought the decision to use the bomb was
a correct one. Then, after the war was over, I
think he was very happy to find other uses for
nuclear energy. He was a scientist.
It wasn’t an easy decision. They were racing to
get these things done. They weren’t even sure
that they would work, or if they would have
another one.”
Lester Skagg's Post-War Work
When World War II ended, Skaggs returned home to Chicago and went back to work on the medical applications of radiation.
He resumed his work at the Michael Reese Hospital, and went on assignment to the physics department at the University of Illinois in order to team with Donald Kerst for a physics research project.
This began what was to become a classic case of collaborative work between two individuals. Kerst had invented a Betatron to use in physics experiments, and the goal was to utilize a Betatron in order to extract an electron beam for medical use.
As serendipity often plays a role in medical and scientific developments, sometimes accompanied by a dose of irony, chance presented a member of the team, who was a promising physics graduate student.
The student was diagnosed with a brain tumor, glioblastoma multiformae and there were no current treatment options available for this type tumor.
The first clinical use of the high energy Betatron radiation for medical therapy proved beneficial to effectively reduce the mass of the tumor, yet not sufficient to eliminate the tumor and provide a cure.
The University of Chicago and ACRH
In 1948, Skaggs became assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Chicago. In 1949, he took the promotion to Associate Professor with the responsibility for the development of radiation therapy equipment and facilities at Argonne Cancer Research Hospital (ACRH).
The Atomic Energy Commission program, titled "Atoms for Peace" funded the facilities at ACRH. In 1953, the ACRH was among the initial list of hospitals dedicated to radiation therapy for cancer treatment.
In 1956, Skaggs, received promotion to Full Professor. He ended up teaching at the University of Chicago for almost 50 years.
He designed and built an analog computer to calculate the radiation dose to tissue to be utilized in treatment plans for radiation therapy. The ‘computer’ was finally running by 1963, and the components occupied a small room.
At ACRH, the next project for the Skaggs and his colleague Lanzl was the design of a cobalt treatment unit, that was built for the most part in the machine shops of ACRH and the University of Illinois.
In the 1950's the duo of Skaggs and Lanzl began another project. This was to develop a graduate program in medical physics, perhaps the first in the United States. In the 1960's, a doctoral program was launched that would award a Ph.D. degree in medical physics.
In the 1970's, Franca T. Kuchnir and Skaggs developed a method to produce neutrons for radiation therapy, maybe the first fast-neutron therapy facility in the United States.
Lester Skaggs died in Chicago of natural causes at the age of 97 on the 3rd. April 2009.
