Ernest Sternglass
| Ernest J. Sternglass | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ernest Joachim Sternglass September 24, 1923 Berlin, Germany |
| Died | February 12, 2015 (aged 91) Ithaca, New York, United States |
| Nationality | German, American |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions |
Naval Ordnance Laboratory Westinghouse Research Laboratories University of Pittsburgh Radiation and Public Health Project |
Ernest Joachim Sternglass (September 24, 1923 – February 12, 2015) was a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He is an American physicist and author, best known for his controversial research on the health risks of low-level radiation from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and from nuclear power plants.
Both of his parents were physicians. When Ernest was fourteen, the Sternglass family left Germany in 1938 to avoid the fascist regime. He completed high school at the age of sixteen, then entered Cornell, registering for an engineering program.
Financial difficulties encountered by his family forced him to leave school for a year. By the time he returned to Cornell, the U.S. had entered World War II. Sternglass volunteered for the navy. He was about to ship out when the atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. After the war Sternglass married.
In Washington, D.C. he worked as a civilian employee at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, which researched military weapons. Sternglass began studying night vision devices, which led him to work with radiation. In 1947, his first son was born, and he had the opportunity to meet Albert Einstein.
From 1952 to 1967 Sternglass worked at the Westinghouse Research Laboratory. Early in his time at Westinghouse, he proposed a technology for image intensification. He also published a formula for interplanetary dust charging, which is still used extensively. All his work there involved nuclear instrumentation. At first he studied fluoroscopy, which "exposes an individual to a considerable dose of radiation." Then he worked on a new kind of television tube for satellites. Eventually, he was put in charge of the Lunar Station program at Westinghouse. During his time at Westinghouse, he worked on a wide range of projects, including applying magnetohydrodynamics to gas-cooled reactor systems, and helping to develop the video cameras used in Project Apollo.
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