War Hero

Dr. Eugene Gardner, a brilliant young nuclear physicist, was working in 1942 at Berkeley, Calif, with the Manhattan (atom bomb) Project. His secret work required him to drill a hole in an electrode made of beryllium oxide. Out of the hole a fine dust rose, and 29-year-old Gardner inhaled it. He did not know, nor did anyone know at the time, that the beryllium in the dust was a slow, implacable poison.

All through the critical years of the bomb project, Gardner worked at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. As one colleague put it, his brain was "one of the nation's great natural resources." When he returned to Berkeley in 1945, his disease was well advanced. He complained of fatigue and shortness of breath. X-ray examination of his chest showed fibrosis in both lungs. But no one could tell the cause; no treatment did any good. He had hardly enough strength for laboratory desk work.

But his scientist's brain was as good as ever. In 1948 he became nationally known as co-discoverer (with Dr. Giulio Lattes) of the man-made meson, a basic atomic particle produced by the 184-inch cyclotron at the University of California (TIME, March 15, 1948). About the same time his disease was finally diagnosed correctly as berylliosis (beryllium poisoning).

Fame does not cure berylliosis. Tuberculosis attacked Dr. Gardner's poisoned lungs. He spent most of his time in Vallejo Community Hospital, often under an oxygen tent. Even when feeling his best, he was forbidden by the doctors to lift his newborn daughter Claire, now two years old. But he kept a microscope near his bed and worked on his meson research whenever he had enough strength. During his final hours under an oxygen tent, knowing that death would no longer be denied, he worked with pencil and notebook, painfully gleaning his brain while he still had time for last bits of knowledge to pass along to the living. Last week at Vallejo, his work all but done, Dr. Gardner laid down his notebook and died.

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