Henry Seymour Kaplan (April 24, 1918 – February 4, 1984) was an American

radiologist Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiatio ...

who pioneered in

radiation therapy Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radia ...

and

radiobiology Radiobiology (also known as radiation biology, and uncommonly as actinobiology) is a field of clinical and basic medical sciences that involves the study of the action of ionizing radiation on living things, especially health effects of radiation. ...

Career

Kaplan earned his degree from

Rush Medical College Rush Medical College is the medical school of Rush University, located in the Illinois Medical District, about 3 km (2 miles) west of the Loop in Chicago. Offering a full-time Doctor of Medicine program, the school was chartered in 1837, and ...

in Chicago, after which he trained at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

. He once said he became interested in oncology after his father died of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...

, the same disease which killed Dr. Kaplan, a non-smoker. Together with

Edward Ginzton Edward Leonard Ginzton (December 27, 1915 – August 13, 1998) was a Ukrainian-American engineer. Education Ginzton completed his B.S. (1936) and M.S. (1937) in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. ...

, he developed the first medical

linear accelerator A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beam ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

while he worked at the

Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. The six million volt machine was first used for treatment in 1956, soon after the earliest linac-based

, first used in London, England, in 1953.Thwaites DI and Tuohy J, Back to the future: the history and development of the clinical linear accelerator, Phys. Med. Biol. 51 (2006) R343–R36, doi:10.1088/0031-9155/51/13/R20 The first patient treated by Kaplan was Gordon Isaacs, who suffered from

retinoblastoma Retinoblastoma (Rb) is a rare form of cancer that rapidly develops from the immature cells of a retina, the light-detecting tissue of the eye. It is the most common primary malignant intraocular cancer in children, and it is almost exclusively fo ...

of his right eye, and the disease threatened his left eye. The patient survived into adulthood with normal vision in his left eye. His main focus was on

Hodgkin's disease Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a type of lymphoma, in which cancer originates from a specific type of white blood cell called lymphocytes, where multinucleated Reed–Sternberg cells (RS cells) are present in the patient's lymph nodes. The condition wa ...

, which was fatal before radiation therapy was used. In 1969, he became the first physician credited with the Atoms for Peace Prize. He was the first radiologist elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 1972. In 1979, he received the Charles F. Kettering Prize from the

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

Cancer Research Foundation.

References

* Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs. ''Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease'' (Stanford University Press; 2010) 456 pages; combines a biography of Kaplan with a history of the lymphatic cancer whose treatment he helped to transform. *Lawrence K. Altma
Dr. Henry Kaplan, Cancer-Fighter, is Dead

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, February 6, 1984. *Malcolm A. Bagshaw, Henry E. Jones, Robert F. Kallman, Joseph P. Kriss
Memorial Resolution Henry S. Kaplan (1918–1984)
Stanford Historical Society. Retrieved December 27, 2008. *Mitzi Baker

Stanford School of Medicine. Retrieved December 27, 2008.

External links

Charlotte D. Jacobs, "Henry S. Kaplan", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaplan, Henry American radiologists Stanford University School of Medicine faculty Atoms for Peace Award recipients 1918 births 1984 deaths Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the French Academy of Sciences Deaths from lung cancer 20th-century American physicians Members of the National Academy of Medicine