Description
Papers include business and personal correspondence, committee correspondence, meeting
minutes and reports, photographs and slides, and appointment books.
Background
Harvey Milton Patt was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 2, 1918. He majored in
physiology at the University of Chicago, receiving a B.S. in 1939 and a Ph.D. in 1942.
During World War II he worked as a civilian on a chemical toxicity program at the
University of Chicago, and as a naval officer [lieutenant (J.G.), USNR] on applied
physiology problems at the Medical Field Research Laboratory, Camp LeJeune, North
Carolina. He was on the staff of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1964, where
his studies of radiation exposure led to the 1949 discovery that certain chemicals could
protect higher organisms from radiation effects. In 1964 he joined the faculty of the
University of California, San Francisco, as professor of radiology and physiology and
director of the Laboratory of Radiobiology and Environmental Health. That same year he
received the Ernest O. Lawrence Award of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission for his work
at Argonne.