John Hundale Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota to Carl and Gunda back in 1904. I wrote about his brother Ernest the other day. He graduated from the Canton High School, before enrolling at the University of South Dakota. He continued his education getting his M.D. degree from the Harvard Medical School.
He had a long-term association with the University of California, Berkeley working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He discovered treatments for leukemia and polycythemia by injecting mice with radioactive phosphorus derived from the cyclotron invented by his brother. His main field was working with cancer patients. He was awared the Enrico Fermi Award in 1983. He received honorary degrees from the University of South Dakota, University of Bordeaux and the Catholic University of America. He was awarded the Caldwell Medal of the American Roetgen Ray Society, the MacKenzie Davidson Medal of the British Institute of Radiology, a medal from Pope Pius XII, the Silver Medal of the University of Bordeaux, the Silver Cross of the Greek Royal Order of the Phoenix and the Pasteur Medal from the Pasteur Institute of Paris.
What you may not now about Dr. Lawrence is that he pioneered the usage of radioactive tracer techniques to study the impact of disease on metabolic processes. In 1949, he became the first physician to use a radioactively labelled noble gas for diagnostic purposes in humans.
NW Arkansas, come for a visit, stay for a lifetime.
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