In Memory of...: Martin D. Kamen at 89, discovered carbon-14 in 1940

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Martin Kamen, 89

Discovered carbon-14

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, 9/6/2002

LOS ANGELES - Martin D. Kamen, whose discovery of the radioactive element carbon-14 made it possible for biologists to decipher the complex chemistry of the living cell, died Saturday at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 89.

''Without carbon-14, biochemistry as we know it today just wouldn't exist,'' said chemist Bruno Zimm, an associate of Dr. Kamen's at the University of California, San Diego.

The discovery also made possible the radiocarbon dating that allows archeologists to determine the age of artifacts dating back 50,000 years, allowing the creation of precise timelines for early civilizations.

Dr. Kamen was working with Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley, when he and Samuel Ruben made the carbon-14 discovery in 1940.

His laurels did not, however, last long. By 1944, he was out of a job, caught in the communist witch hunts of World War II. His passport was revoked, he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948, and, three years later, he was labeled a spy by the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald.

He spent much of the next decades trying to rebuild his career. At his nadir, he attempted suicide.

The charges were groundless. He got his passport back, sued the newspapers for libel and won, and in 1995 received the Enrico Fermi Award for his pioneering contributions to physics. Colleagues say that he should have received the Nobel Prize as well because his discovery was crucially important to so many areas of science.

''They're making amends, which is better than what they would do in Russia,'' Dr. Kamen said at the time of his Fermi award. ''It's vindication. ... but I've spent 55 years toward that end in building my career.''

Dr. Kamen was born in Toronto, the son of Jewish immigrants. He was a child prodigy on the violin - a fact that he said scarred the rest of his life.

''I was [always] the center of attention,'' Dr. Kamen said later. ''Whenever there were family gatherings, I was expected to perform and my cousins hated me. Everyone was out to get me. When nobody was looking, I got beat up.''

That experience often led him to denigrate his accomplishments. ''I don't want to be singled out. I didn't want to be a soloist.''

As a teen, he switched to the viola, the better to remain in the background. He remained an accomplished musician throughout his career, often playing with well-known performers.

After graduate school at the University of Chicago, he joined UC Berkeley, where Lawrence ultimately launched him on the search for a new isotope of carbon.

Typically, Dr. Kamen allowed most of the credit for the carbon-14 discovery to go to Ruben, who was killed not long afterward when he inhaled phosphene in a laboratory accident.

In 1949, chemist Willard Libby of the University of California made use of the discovery to invent radiocarbon dating.

Dr. Kamen was a liberal, a political leaning that brought many scientists under suspicion during the war years. While he was working on the Manhattan Project at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he incurred further suspicion when he correctly deduced that the project had already built a nuclear reactor. He was not cleared to know such information.

His downfall came after a 1944 dinner with two Russian officials he had met at a cocktail party given by violinist Isaac Stern, with whom he occasionally played. The Russians asked him about radiation treatments for a colleague with leukemia. FBI agents suspected a more sinister motive, and he was fired the next day.

For nine months, the only job he could get was as an inspector in a shipyard. Ultimately, however, he was hired by Washington University in St. Louis. He later became a founding faculty member at UCSD and taught at USC also.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he did groundbreaking research on bacterial cytochromes and photosynthesis.

Part of that period - 1957 to 1961 - was spent as a professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

This story ran on page E11 of the Boston Globe on 9/6/2002.

-- posted by Steven_Russell