Page 8 University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Nov. 29, 1961
Frank Hoecker Is Radiation Expert
By Richard Currie
A professor who did not receive a formal high school education has established himself as a scientist and has built a department at KU in his field.
He worked as a chemist for the Pillsbury Baking Co. when "he should have been in high school," as he puts it.
Nevertheless, Frank E. Hoecker, professor of radiation biophysics, has established himself as a radiologist of considerable proportion and his department a formidable one, verified by its close contact with the government.
PROF. HOECKER has built this reputation through a series of government jobs, appointments and papers. In 1946, two years after he came to KU, he began a 14-year study of radium and its effects on the human body. Later expanding to include strontium, Prof. Hoecker delivered a paper on his progress at the International Conference of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Uses in 1955. He gave another paper on the same subject at the Conference's second meeting in 1958.
But papers are not the extent of Prof. Hoecker's work in radiation. In 1943 he was in charge of radiation protection work for every facility using radium in the country. Later that year he worked at Columbia University on the measurement and detection of neutrons and biological effects.
HOW DID he do all this without even the beginnings of a formal education? Prof. Hoecker made up his deficiency by taking high school courses when he was working for Pillsbury, graduated magna cum laude from the College of Emporia in 3 years and received his Master's and Ph.D. from KU in the early 30s.
After a stint as head of the department of physics at the University of Kansas City, Prof. Hoecker began his work with the government. Prof. Hoecker's Columbia research led to his radium project when a coroner-friend of his in New Jersey allowed the department to examine the bones of people who had died from radium poisoning.
ON A LEAVE of absence during 1958-59, Prof. Hoecker developed a dosimeter for the U.S. Army, a device which measures the preservative limit of radiation present in food until it subsides. When it does subside the dosimeter, a small capsule with liquid in it, becomes immobile.
The development of this device enabled the Army to solve the
When Lt. Kennedy's PT boat was sunk in '43, he and his crew were up for dead. But actually, they were fighting starvation on a desert island. Read the authentic account of their ordeal in this week's Saturday Evening Post.
problem of protecting food against radiation. The dosimeter warns them if the food has become contaminated.
Prof. Hoecker attended the atomic demonstrations at Bikini Atoll in 1945 and commented that man would use the atomic bomb. Today with nuclear weapons testing running rampant he still thinks man will resort to nuclear war to settle his differences.
"TIVE BEEN THROUGH two world wars," he says. "I can see similarities between those two buildsups and today's."
Yet Prof. Hoecker maintains the United States should carry on nuclear testing.
"Why shouldn't we?" he asks. "It would be nothing short of suicide if we failed to do so."
Prof. Hoeker ridicules those people who fret and protest against nuclear testing. He cannot understand why they worry about an insignificant amount of fallout when they disregard their health.
"SMOKING and excessive drinking hurt the body much more than fallout," he asserts. "Ideally, we don't want very much fallout, but what we're getting from these tests isn't going to harm anyone."
Prof. Hoecker says he sees a great challenge for him in his department and will not leave KU, though he has had some attractive job offers. He sees, however, another area where his services are needed and feels a certain sense of obligation to stay here.
Prof. Hoecker is the only certified radiologist in this area and does an enormous amount of work consulting and advising hospitals in radiation protection. With this work in mind he feels bound to KU but happily so.
Self-reliance
NEW YORK — (UPI) Children born today will be forced to rely more on each other than on adults for working out many of life's problems. Dr. Hugh Gertthon Morgan reports.
The director of the Institute for Child Study, University of Maryland, also told the New York State Council for Children that even now children learn more from each other than grownups ever can hope to teach them.
What is a turkey dinner without a turkey?
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.— Oliver Wendell Holmes
KU Prof. Studying Poultry Diseases
Albert A. Benedict, associate professor of bacteriology is trying to prevent just such a problem.
For the past four years, Prof. Benedict has been doing research on the problem of ornithosis, a virus infection of wild birds and domestic fowl that can be passed on to poultry dressing plant workers. He is doing the research under a grant from the U.S. Public Health Service.
Prof. Benedict who joined the University of Kansas faculty in 1957, began the project when he was assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
NEW YORK — (UPI) — The nation's family doctors recently urged President Kennedy and the congress to enact legislation that would let homeowners deduct the cost of constructing atomic fallout shelters.
Shelter Deduction
Eastern Civ Class Offered in Spring
Dr. Floyd C. Bratt, president of the American Academy of General Practice, one of those favoring a tax incentive, said such shelters fall within the scope of scientific preventive medicine.
A new pilot project in the area of Eastern Civilization will begin at KU in the Spring semester.
The plan is an outgrowth of the present Western Civilization program, required for most KU students. The new course will attempt to acquaint students with some of the forces which have formed the "Eastern mind."
The course will be an honors section, by invitation only, in Oriental Languages and Literatures 53 — "East Asian Literature in Translation."
It will be taught by Benjamin Wallacker, assistant professor of Oriental languages.
Francis Heller, associate dean of the college said that in the study of Eastern Civilization our Western concepts are inadequate. He said that there is a difference of formulation in verbal symbols.
The class will be composed of mostly sophomores and a few juniors, but no seniors.
Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of man.—Benjamin Disraeli
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