Gerald J. Oppenheimer

Gerald J. Oppenheimer (born Julius Oppenheimer in 1922) is an American librarian and scholar. He is retired from the directorship of the Health Sciences Library at the University of Washington, which post he held from 1963 until 1987.^[1][2]

Biography

Gerald Oppenheimer was born Julius Oppenheimer in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1922. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1940 via Japan. The family settled in Seattle, Washington, where Oppenheimer attended school and college. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943-1944 and in the U.S. Coast Guard Voluntary Port Security Force in 1945. In 1946, he married Mildred Karnofsky.

He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Washington in 1946 and 1947, respectively, and attended graduate school at Harvard University from 1947-1952. After earning a Master's degree in library science from Columbia University in 1953, Oppenheimer worked as a librarian at the Seattle Public Library and a manager of information services at Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories. He later became the head of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at the University of Washington libraries, and then the director of the Health Sciences Library, a position he held until his retirement in 1987. Under his tenure, in 1968 the Health Sciences Library became only the second Regional Medical Library in the country. He was also the founding president of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Library Directors.^[3] Throughout his career, Oppenheimer held multiple offices in the Medical Library Association, the National Library of Medicine, the National Cancer Institute, the Special Libraries Association, and the University of Washington.

After retirement, Oppenheimer served as the vice president and secretary of the Puget Sound Association of Phi Beta Kappa.^[4]

References

External links

• Gerald Oppenheimer's website
• Guide to the Gerald J. Oppenheimer Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.