On December 12, 1995, it was announced that the United States has chosen Martin D. Kamen to receive the Enrico Fermi award. Dr. Kamen will travel to Washington, DC, to receive a gold medal from the President, a reception at the White House, and a check for $100,000 (part of which he must return in income taxes). The Fermi prize, America's highest award in science, is given to only a few very distinguished and accomplished scientists. In this unusual case, it is a double honor - it is an honor to Dr. Kamen and it is an honor to the United States. The award will undoubtedly mention that Martin Kamen was the first man to synthesize Carbon 14, the first (with his co-worker Sam Reuben) to make a qualitative characterization of its properties, and the first to estimate its half-life (2,000 to 4,000 years in his initial work - now known to be 5,730 years). The award may also mention that the discovery of
In the fall of 1939, Dr. Kamen devised a series of experiments using the 37-inch and 60-inch cyclotrons at Berkeley and including essential modifications in the cyclotron apparatus that he had made. His experiments were specifically designed to synthesize a long-lived isotope of carbon. Less than six months later, on February 27, 1940, he succeeded.
The synthesis was considered so important that it was announced at the Nobel Prize ceremony for E.O. Lawrence a few days later -even though Kamen's co-worker, Sam Reuben, was so worried about error that he did not attend. (There was plenty to worry about, since, even after the experiments were completed, J. Robert Oppenheimer held to the opinion that such a long-lived isotope of carbon could not exist - for theoretical reasons.) Later, Martin Kamen was the first man to use carbon 14 as a tracer in a biological system. His subsequent work, with many coworkers, laid an essential cornerstone of modern biochemistry - which depends upon the ability to label and then trace carbon atoms through chemical processes by means of carbon 14. Kamen's book,
Isotopic Tracers in Biology, in its several editions was so influential with two generations of biochemists and so widely read that the publishers, Academic Press, called it their "Gone With the Wind.'' With radioactive tracers and with a wide variety of other techniques, Dr. Kamen pursued a life-long fascination with the biochemistry of photosynthesis. The hundreds of research papers that he and his colleagues published on this subject made possible much of our current understanding of photosynthetic processes. Always generous, almost to a fault, Kamen shared the fruits of his brilliance so completely with his many coworkers that a great many scientists owe their careers and fame largely to his extraordinary help.
Martin Kamen would have received the Nobel Prize for the synthesis of carbon 14. Later, he would have received serious consideration for a second Nobel award based on the tracer and photosynthesis work. In over 50 years he has, however, received neither.
Responding to his country's needs in 1941, he joined the Manhattan Project along with most of the physicists and chemists with whom he worked before World War II. He made valuable contributions to that project. Suddenly, however, in July 1944, he was forced off the project on the basis of an erroneous security report that he was not allowed to see until ten years later.
Officials of the United States Government then commenced a deliberate program to drive him out of science, smear him in the public media, prevent him from working with colleagues abroad by passport denial, and, in a plan that was fortunately dropped, to murder him.
For an entire decade, he was tracked and smeared continually by government spooks and so harassed, both personally and professionally, that he finally attempted suicide.
From this low point, he fought his way back, cleared his name in successful lawsuits against the government and their fellow travelers in the press, recovered his passport, and finally cleared himself of all official suspicion in 1955. His wife Beka, whose steadfast help was essential to Martin Kamen's victory in this 10-year battle, died from the effects of depression brought on by this ordeal.
Martin Kamen was always a patriotic American who rigorously kept America's secrets. There is not a shred of evidence otherwise - although it took years of litigation to force the government to allow a comprehensive look at their files on him.
It is remarkable that Kamen managed such a brilliant research career in the midst of this turmoil and under the clouds that federal government thugs cast over him.
In one particular, however, his enemies have won - so far. They smeared Kamen with so much mud during the apex of his career and the years after his greatest accomplishments that he was not awarded the deserved Nobel Prize.
Now, it is finally over. With the award of the Fermi prize, the United States government has not only correctly honored his scientific achievements, it has lifted the last vestiges of the cloud it placed over his character and patriotism. Martin Kamen is honored by the receipt of this award. The United States is honored by its choice and by his acceptance.
Martin Kamen is 82. It is too late to restore the years that he and Beka lost. It is not too late, however, for intellectual justice - the award to him of a Nobel Prize.
There is no living candidate more worthy of this award.
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Vol. 23, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 23, No. 5 Date: January 01, 1996 01:45 PM Title: A Double Honor
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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