Ernest J. Sternglass facts for kids

Ernest Joachim Sternglass (born September 24, 1923 – died February 12, 2015) was an American physicist and author. He was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He also directed the Radiation and Public Health Project.

Sternglass was known for his research on the health risks of low-level radiation. This radiation came from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear power plants. His ideas were sometimes debated by other scientists.

Early Life and Education

Ernest Sternglass was born in Berlin, Germany. Both of his parents were doctors. In 1938, when he was 14, his family left Germany. They moved to avoid the Nazi government.

He finished high school at 16. Then, he went to Cornell University to study engineering. He had to leave school for a year because his family faced money problems. When he returned, the U.S. had joined World War II. Sternglass joined the navy. He was about to be sent overseas when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. After the war, he got married.

A Career in Science

After the war, Sternglass worked for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C.. This lab studied military weapons. He began working with night vision devices, which involved studying radiation. In 1947, his first son was born. He also met the famous scientist Albert Einstein. They talked about Sternglass's ideas on how neutrons could be created with low energy.

From 1952 to 1967, Sternglass worked at the Westinghouse Research Laboratory. He helped create new ways to make images clearer. He also developed a formula for how interplanetary dust gets an electric charge. This formula is still used today. All his work there involved nuclear tools. He studied fluoroscopy, which uses a lot of radiation. He also worked on a new type of television camera for satellites. Later, he led the Lunar Station program at Westinghouse. He even helped develop the video cameras used in the Apollo program space missions.

In 1967, Sternglass moved to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He became a professor there. He led important work on digital X-ray technology for medical imaging. This work continued into the early 1990s.

Sternglass was also a co-founder and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP). He passed away on February 12, 2015, in Ithaca, New York.

Research on Radiation Harm

In the early 1960s, Sternglass learned about the work of Alice Stewart. She was a scientist at Oxford University. Stewart had found that even a small amount of radiation given to an unborn baby could double its risk of getting leukemia and cancer.

Sternglass then studied how nuclear fallout affected babies and children. He believed it caused more cases of leukemia, cancer, and a big increase in infant mortality (babies dying). In 1963, he published a paper called "Cancer: Relation of Prenatal Radiation to Development of the Disease in Childhood."

In 1963, Sternglass spoke to the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. He talked about the levels of strontium-90 found in children. This was part of the Baby Tooth Survey. Strontium-90 came from bomb tests and was linked to childhood leukemia. His studies helped lead to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed by President John F. Kennedy.

In 1969, Sternglass suggested that 400,000 babies had died due to health problems from fallout. He thought it lowered their ability to fight disease and reduced their birth weight. He also wrote an article in Esquire magazine. In it, he claimed that fallout from an Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system could harm many children in the U.S.

Three Mile Island Accident

In April 1979, Sternglass was asked to speak at a hearing about the Three Mile Island accident. This was a nuclear power plant accident. He believed that efforts were being made to hide information about possible deaths from the accident. Sternglass argued that an increase of 430 infant deaths in the U.S. northeast that summer could be linked to radiation from Three Mile Island.

However, other scientists and researchers questioned his methods. They pointed out that his findings might not be statistically strong enough. They also noted that he didn't always look at all the information needed to make a clear conclusion.

Cosmological Ideas

Ernest Sternglass also wrote a book called Before the Big Bang: the Origins of the Universe. In this book, he discussed the idea of a "primeval atom" proposed by Georges Lemaître. Sternglass suggested that the entire mass of the universe might have started as a tiny, super-heavy electron-positron pair. He believed this particle then divided many times to create everything we see today.

Books by Ernest Sternglass

• Ernest J. Sternglass (1981) Secret Fallout: low-level radiation from Hiroshima to Three-Mile Island. ISBN: 0-07-061242-0.
• Ernest J. Sternglass (1997) Before the Big Bang: the origins of the universe. ISBN: 1-56858-087-8.

See also

• Downwinders
• Radiation Exposure Compensation Act
• Background radiation
• Ionizing radiation
• Radiation poisoning
• Radioactive contamination
• Health physics
• National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
• John Gofman