From Stagg Field to the IBA Cyclone 18 cyclotron A look at the history of nuclear medicine at the University of Chicago PHOTO BY JOHN ZICH
BY TIHA M. LONG, PHD
Chin-Tu Chen, PhD’86, led efforts for the installation of the IBA Cyclone 18 at the University of Chicago.
T
he nuclear era began in 1942 when the world’s first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place at Stagg Field on the University of Chicago campus. In the decades that followed, University scientists made historic advances in harnessing this technology in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Early nuclear medicine’s A-Team
Recent publications Chang et al. Angew Chem Int Ed. 2020. Persky et al. J Clin Oncol. 2020. Solanki et al. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2020.
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In 1954, the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital — the largest facility ever built for the purpose of cancer research and treatment using nuclear medicine — opened its doors. The facility attracted four scientists whose work would launch the field of modern nuclear medicine. Katherine Austin Lathrop, Professor Emerita in the Department of Radiology, brought her biochemistry background to the University in 1945 as a member of the Manhattan Project, the secret research program to develop the atomic bomb. She became a pioneer in the development and testing of
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DIVISION
radiopharmaceuticals — radioisotopes used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Paul Harper, MD, completed his residency at the University and joined the Departments of Surgery and Radiology in 1953. Harper worked closely with Lathrop to investigate medical applications of radioisotopes. Mathematician Robert Beck, a longtime faculty member in the Department of Radiology, joined the team in 1957 and began working on imaging instruments that could detect the signals from radioisotopes. Beck served as the assistant director of Argonne Cancer Research Hospital from 1963 to 1967 and became director of the Franklin McLean Memorial Research Institute, the center that evolved from the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital. Alex Gottschalk, MD, completed his residency at the University of Chicago, then returned in 1964 to join the Radiology faculty and became director of the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital in 1967. These scientists developed an imaging technique using a radiotracer labeled with technetium-99m
