Martin Kamen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin David Kamen (August 27, 1913, Toronto – August 31, 2002), was co-discoverer (with Sam Ruben) of the isotope carbon-14 on February 27, 1940, at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley, which was part of the Manhattan Project.

By bombarding matter with particles in the cyclotron, radioactive isotopes, such as carbon-14, were generated. Using carbon-14, the order of events in biochemical reactions could be elucidated, showing the precursors of a particular biochemical product, revealing the network of reactions that constitute life. Kamen was a major worker in this field.

Kamen met with Grigory Kheifets and Grigory Kasparov, KGB officers at the Soviet San Francisco consulate on July 1, 1944. He was fired from the Manhattan Project in 1944 when security officers overheard him discussing atomic research with Kheifets. A Congressional investigation established Kheifets received classified information on uranium stockpiles from Kamen.

Some time during the 1980s, Kamen became a member of the "faculty" at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the think tank which was responsible for the controversial Oregon Petition. The purpose of this petition was to show a lack of consensus among scientists on the subject of global warming. The text accompanying the petition has since come under attack for being deceptively written.

Martin Kamen died in 2002 at the age of 89.

Winner of the Enrico Fermi Award April 24, 1996. He was awarded the 1989 Albert Einstein World Award of Science.

[edit] Book by Martin Kamen

Kamen, Martin D. Radiant Science, Dark Politics: A Memoir of the Nuclear Age, Forward by Edwin M. McMillan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

[edit] References

Report of 11 January 1944, FBI Silvermaster file, serial 3378.
US House of Representatives, 80st Congress, Special Session, Committee on Un-American Activities, Report on Soviet Espionage Activities in Connection with the Atom Bomb, September 28, 1948 (US Gov. Printing Office) pp. 181, 182.
“Comintern Apparatus Summary Report”.
“The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States,” 30 December 1951, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, 39–40.
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999), pgs. 232, 236.