Raymond E. Zirkle
January 9, 1902 - March 4, 1988
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Scientific Discipline: Cellular and Developmental Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1959)
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Raymond Zirkle’s work in the field of radiation biology provided some of the most detailed early observations of how ionizing radiation affects living cells. In the 1950s, he and his colleagues designed new technology to observe the fate of irradiated cells over time and to analyze how various structures in the nucleus contribute to mitosis.
Zirkle’s research began at the University of Missouri, where he earned his PhD in 1932, and it continued at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer in biophysics. This work—irradiating fern spores with alpha particles from polonium—led to him to the concept of linear energy transfer and a formula that quantifies the biological effect of radioactive particles, given their distance from a target.
During World War II, while he was a professor at the University of Indiana, Zirkle was invited to join the biological research program of the Manhattan Project as a principle investigator. He then joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1944 and was director of the university’s new Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics, remaining at the University of Chicago until his retirement in the 1970s.
Zirkle served on the editorial boards of seven research journals, was a president and councilor of the Radiation Research Society, and he was a founding member and councilor of the Biophysics Society. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and numerous other research societies during the course of his career.
