Katherine A. Lathrop

Katherine Austin Lathrop (1915–2005) was an American nuclear medicine researcher, biochemist and member of the Manhattan Project. She conducted pioneer work on the effects of radiation exposure on animals and humans.

Early career Lathrop was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, on June 16, 1915. She attended Oklahoma A&M, where she earned bachelor of science degrees in biology in 1936 and physics in 19139. She met her husband, Clarence Lathrop, while they were both studying for master of science degrees in chemistry. They married in 1938 and had five children.

Upon completion of their master's degrees in 1939, the couple first moved to New Mexico and then to Wyoming in 1941. Lathrop became a research assistant at the University of Wyoming where she focused her efforts on research pertaining to poisonous plants that grew on the Great Plains. In 1944, Lathrop and her family moved to Chicago where Clarence pursued a medical degree at Northwestern University. They divorced in 1973.

Post Manhattan Project In 1947 after the Manhattan Project had been dismantled, Lathrop remained on staff at the lab as an associate biochemist as it was renamed Argonne National Laboratory. In 1954, tired of an exhausting commute, Lathrop left Argonne to pursue a career at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital. It had opened in 1953 on the University of Chicago campus making it much closer to her home.

She became a professor emeritus in 1985 and published her last paper in 1999 and then retired in 2000.