Philip Drinker
| Philip Drinker | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 12, 1894 Haverford, Pennsylvania |
| Died | October 19, 1972 Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire |
| Engineering career | |
| Significant projects | iron lung |
Philip Drinker (December 12, 1894 in Haverford, Pennsylvania – October 19, 1972 in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire) was an industrial hygienist. With Louis Agassiz Shaw, he invented the first widely used iron lung in 1928.[1][2]
Family and early life
Drinker's father was railroad man and Lehigh University president Henry Sturgis Drinker;[1] his siblings included lawyer and musicologist Henry Sandwith Drinker, Jr., pathologist Cecil Kent Drinker,[2] businessman James Drinker, and biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen.[1] After graduating from St. George's and Princeton in 1915,[1] Philip Drinker trained as a chemical engineer at Lehigh for two years.[1]
Drinker was hired to teach industrial illumination and ventilation at Harvard Medical School[1] and soon joined his brother Cecil and colleagues Alice Hamilton and David L. Edsall on the faculty of the nascent Harvard School of Public Health[2] in 1921[2] or 1923.[1] He studied, taught, and wrote textbooks and scholarly works on a variety of topics in industrial hygiene;[2] the iron lung itself was originally designed in response to an industrial hygiene problem—coal gas poisoning[2]—though it would become best known as a life-preserving treatment for polio. Charles Momsen credited Drinker "and his friends" for their assistance with gas-mixture experiments that ultimately made possible the rescue of the survivors of the USS Squalus in 1939.[3] During World War II, Drinker directed the industrial hygiene program for the United States Maritime Commission.[1] After the war, he advised the Atomic Energy Commission.[1]
Drinker served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Industrial Hygiene for over thirty years[1] and, in 1942, as president of the American Industrial Hygiene Association, to which he had belonged since its inception.[2]
He retired from Harvard in 1960[2] or 1961.[1] Drinker was inducted into the US National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 2007.
He and his wife Susan[4] had a son, bioengineer Philip A. Drinker,[5] and 2 daughters, Susan Drinker Moran (1926-2010), author, and Eliza Scudder, educator.
Publications
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References
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- ↑ Momsen, Charles B. "Rescue and Salvage of U.S.S. Squalus." Lecture delivered to the Harvard Engineering Society on October 6, 1939. Text available online. Accessed March 17, 2007.
- ↑ "Philip Drinker." American Industrial Hygiene Association journal. May 1973: 34(5), 179-181. Available online by subscription.
- ↑ Sallans, Andrew. "iron lung." online exhibit. University of Virginia, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. 2005. Accessed March 18, 2007.
