Philip Drinker

Philip Drinker (December 12Fact|date=March 2007, 1894Lehigh University, P. C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. "Distinguished Alumni: Great Talents & Bright Minds" web series. [http://www3.lehigh.edu/engineering/about/drinker.asp Philip Drinker '17] . Accessed March 18, 2007.] in Haverford, Pennsylvania–October 19, 1972Sherwood, R. J. "Obituaries: Philip Drinker 1894–1972." "The Annals of Occupational Hygiene." Vol. 16, pp. 93-94. Pergamon Press 1973. [http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/16/1/93 Available online by subscription.] ] in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire) was an industrial hygienist who invented the first widely used iron lung in 1928 with Louis Agassiz Shaw.

Drinker's father was railroad-man and Lehigh University president Henry Sturgis Drinker; his siblings included lawyer and musicologist Henry Sandwith Drinker, Jr., pathologist Cecil Kent Drinker,, businessman James Drinker, and biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen. After graduating from Princeton in 1915, Philip Drinker trained as a chemical engineer at Lehigh for two years.

Drinker was hired to teach industrial illumination and ventilation at Harvard Medical School 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 in 1921 or 1923. He studied, taught, and wrote textbooks and scholarly works on a variety of topics in industrial hygiene; the iron lung itself was originally designed in response to an industrial hygiene problem—coal gas poisoning—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.Momsen, Charles B. "Rescue and Salvage of U.S.S. "Squalus"." Lecture delivered to the Harvard Engineering Society on October 6, 1939. [http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq99-6.htm Text available online.] Accessed March 17, 2007.] During World War II, Drinker directed the industrial hygiene program for the United States Maritime Commission. After the war, he advised the Atomic Energy Commission.

Drinker served as editor-in-chief of "The Journal of Industrial Hygiene" for over thirty years and, in 1942, as president of the American Industrial Hygiene Association, to which he had belonged since its inception.

He retired from Harvard in 1960 or 1961.

He was inducted into the US National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 2007.

He and his wife Susan"Philip Drinker." "American Industrial Hygiene Association journal." May 1973: 34(5), 179-181. [http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/content/u30vhp102606xh27/fulltext.pdf Available online by subscription.] ] had a son, bioengineer Philip A. Drinker.Sallans, Andrew. [http://historical.hsl.virginia.edu/ironlung/pg4.cfm "iron lung." online exhibit.] University of Virginia, Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. 2005. Accessed March 18, 2007.]

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