Martin Kamen - Biography

Biography

Kamen was born August 27, 1913, in Toronto, the son of Russian immigrants. He grew up in Chicago. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1933 and obtained a PhD in physical chemistry from the same university in 1936. Thereafter he sought a research position in chemistry and nuclear physics under Ernest Lawrence at the radiation laboratory in Berkeley, where he worked without pay for six months until being hired to oversee the preparation and distribution of the cyclotron's products. The discovery of carbon-14 occurred at Berkeley when Kamen and Ruben bombarded graphite in the cyclotron in hopes of producing a radioactive isotope of carbon that could be used as a tracer in investigating chemical reactions in photosynthesis. Their experiment resulted in production of carbon-14.

In 1943, Kamen was assigned to Manhattan Project work at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he worked briefly before returning to Berkeley. He was fired from Berkeley in 1945 after being accused of leaking nuclear weapons secrets to Russia, and for a time was unable to obtain an academic position, until being hired by Arthur Holly Compton to run the cyclotron program in the medical school of Washington University at St. Louis. Kamen taught the faculty how to use radioactive tracer materials in research, and his own interests gradually shifted into biochemistry.

In 1957, he moved to Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and in 1961 he joined the University of California, San Diego, where he remained until his retirement in 1978.

Martin Kamen died August 31, 2002, at the age of 89 in Montecito (Santa Barbara), California. He was a longtime resident of Casa Dorinda retirement home. He was very well liked and admired for helping others.