Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr.

Education Louis Jr. followed his father's educational footsteps, first attending the George Washington Copp Noble School (which had been renamed the Noble and Greenough School in 1892) and later attending Harvard University, graduating in 1909.

From late 1917 until early 1919, Shaw and his research team conducted investigations in his home laboratory on the physiological effects of poisonous gases and other problems related to the ongoing war in Europe. In the spring of 1919, he joined the faculty at the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers in the department of industrial hygiene. The Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers was a joint venture between Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that began in 1913. The joint venture ended in 1922, when the Harvard School of Public Health was formally established.

In 1927, Shaw was arrested for the distillation of alcohol, which was illegal in the United States during Prohibition. The machine was powered by an electric motor with air pumps from two vacuum cleaners. The air pumps changed the pressure inside a rectangular, airtight metal box, pulling air in and out of the lungs.

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