ORAL HISTORY OF DR. HENRY I. KOHN
On

September

13,

1994,

Ms.

Anna

Berge

of the

Lawrence

Berkeley Laboratory Archives and Records Office interviewed
Dr. Kohn at his residence in Berkeley, California.
Dr. Henry I. Kohn was selected for the oral history project
because of the positions he held at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and
Harvard Medical School. This oral interview covers Dr. Kohn’s
career as a radiologist; he also offers his perspective on the
people he worked with and the era he worked in.
Short Biography:
Henry Irving Kohn was born in New York City on August 19,
1909. He was married in 1961; they have two children. He
received his A.B. from Dartmouth in 1930 and his Ph.D. in
physiology from Harvard in 1935. From 1935 to 1937, Dr. Kohn
was a Traveling Fellow, General Education Board in both
Stockholm, Sweden and Cambridge, England. From 1937 to
1943, he was an instructor-assistant professor of physiology and
pharmacology at Duke University in North Carolina. In 1943, he
entered Harvard Medical School and received his M.D. in 1946.
He served as a commissioned officer in United States Public
Health Service (USPHS); from 1947 to 1953, he was stationed at
Baltimore, Maryland, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
Tennessee, and UCSF. He remained at UCSF for ten years and
joined the Research Laboratory as a clinical professor of
experimental radiology and research radiologist. He left UCSF in
1963 to take the position of Fuller-American Professor of
Radiology at Harvard Medical School, and from 1968 to 1976, he

was the Gaiser Professor of Radiation Biology. Since 1976, he has

been a professor emeritus. During his career, Dr. Kohn has held

the following positions:
*

From

1957

to

1960:

Scientific

Secretary,

Advisory

*

From 1964 to 1979:
Director of the Shields Warren
Radiation Laboratory at New England Deaconess Hospital.

*

From 1965 to 1969: Memberof a radiation study section for
the National Institutes of Health.

Committee on Biology and Medicine for the Atomic Energy
Commission.

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