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William G. Myers, 1908 - 1988
by A. J. Christoforidis
Professor of Radiology, The Ohio State University

William G. Myers, the man who had a life full of "twinkling atoms" and "scintillating people," as he often used to say, died June 17, 1988. Dr. Myers was born in Toledo, OH, August 7, 1908. He was the son of a farmer who was also a part-time factory worker. His early life included a newspaper route when he was five years old; a period of time in an orphanage; and jobs as a photographer in Denver, as a waiter in Detroit, and as a barber when he was attending college. He received a master's degree, and a Ph.D. in 1939, in theoretical physical chemistry. He received his M.D. degree from Ohio State University in 1941. Dr. Myers' involvement in nuclear medicine started in 1940, while he was working at The Ohio State University cyclotron, one of the first cyclotrons in the world. He wrote a thesis entitled "Applications of the Cyclotron and Its Products in Biomedicine" in 1941. His productive work with the cyclotron became important in clinical medicine. Appropriately, in an editorial in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine in 1981, it was said that "if Ernest Lawrence is the Father of the Cyclotron, Bill Myers is its Godfather."

It was Dr. Myers' suggestion, in 1946, to replace the expensive radium, not available in many parts of the world at that time, with cobalt-60, which he called "the poor man's radium," and to replace radon with gold-198 seeds. With Dr. Joseph L. Morton at The Ohio State University, he had used cobalt in the form of needles, long before it was used in teletherapy. In 1960, Dr. Myers was able to bring to Ohio State the first industrially fabricated gamma camera, which was installed in his laboratory and now is housed at the Smithsonian Institute. Dr. Myers introduced or recommended the use of more radionuclides for medical use than any other researcher. Besides 60Co and 198Au, he also introduced chromium-51, strontium-87m, strontium-85m, potassium-38, iodine-121, iodine-123, and iodine-125. Dr. Rosalyn Yalow, in a handwritten letter to Dr. Myers referring to his contributions, wrote, "To Bill Myers, a fine friend for more than three decades, with fond memories of his suggestion in 1960 of the applicability of I-125 rather than I-131 for tracer labeling, a prediction that proved most valuable to us." As is known, 125I is the most commonly used tracer today.

The pioneering contributions of Dr. Myers are numerous. In 1964, at the International Atomic Energy Symposium on Medical Radioisotope Scanning, Dr. Myers presented the only paper on the gamma camera on the program. He concluded prophetically that "the scintillation camera is shown to provide an elegant method for the study of dynamic processes in vivo that are not otherwise demonstrable." Professor Kurt Scheer of Heidelberg, Germany, familiar with Dr. Myers' contributions and vision, stated, "It has been my observation that when Bill Myers sits and thinks, the whole world of nuclear medicine benefits."

Dr. Myers was not interested in making his contributions widely known. He was a believer of the famous Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu's dictum that "leaders are best, when people scarcely know that they exist. When their work is done, their aim is fulfilled, and the people then will all say: we did this ourselves." Dr. Myers was not only a basic researcher but also an excellent teacher. He started the first radiation biology course taught at The Ohio State University in 1949 and continued till 1975. He served as a visiting professor of nuclear medicine and lectured on theoretical biophysics at Berkeley. He was a visiting professor at Cornell University where he was conducting research using the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center cyclotron with 38K, carbon-11, and xenon-127 and continuing to publish the results of this research till 1988.

His honors are numerous. He received the Paul C. Aebersold Award, the James Ewing Society Award, the Alumni Achievement Award from The Ohio State University, the Hevesy Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award, and numerous other distinctions, including an honorary doctorate. Dr. Myers has been officially named a nuclear medicine pioneer, joining many other great scientists whom he knew personally as friends. Among them were Paul Aebersold and the known laureates, Ernest Lawrence, Lise Meitner, Irene Curie, and, most of all, his friend, Professor Georg Charles de Hevesy, whom Dr. Myers used to call the father of nuclear medicine.

His beloved and "favorite wife," as he always used to call her, Dr. Florence Lenahan Myers, had been an inspiration to him and a medical advisor. There will be continuing benefits in nuclear medicine because of his efforts. As one of his friends and a national leader in nuclear medicine said in addressing him in one of the Society of Nuclear Medicine meetings, "Dr. Myers' research and teaching have helped all mankind."