Roscoe Koontz

African American health physicist

• Born: December 16, 1922
• Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
• Died: May 17, 1997
• Place of death: Richland, Washington

Koontz was a pioneer in the field of health physics, a discipline concerned with protection from ionizing radiation. Many of the nuclear safety procedures he helped to implement are still used today.

Primary fields: Chemistry; medicine and medical technology; physics

Primary invention: Pinhole gamma-ray camera

Early Life

Roscoe Koontz spent his youth in the residentially segregated city of his birth, St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike many of his peers who sought employment upon graduation from Vashon High School, one of the city’s racially segregated public schools, Koontz opted to continue his education. With few opportunities available for blacks, Koontz chose to remain close to home as he considered possible career options. He enrolled at Stowes Teachers College in the St. Louis area. Founded in 1890 as a normal school for future black elementary teachers, Stowes offered Koontz the opportunity to consider his future plans. When he made up his mind, Koontz discovered that he wanted something more than the routinized life of an educator.

With one year of college under his belt, Koontz enlisted in the Regular Army Reserve Corps in 1942 and remained on active duty in this capacity until the end of World War II. Military service afforded Koontz the opportunity to travel outside his home state as well as the chance to take advantage of federally funded educational opportunities at West Virginia State College, where he received training in a pre-engineering program. After the war, Koontz attended Tennessee State University, a historically black college, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry.

Life’s Work

In 1948, Koontz participated in the University of Rochester’s Atomic Energy Health Physics Fellowship Training Program. Koontz flourished under the rigorous training he received at the upstate New York school and soon realized that he possessed considerable aptitude for detailed scientific investigation. While at Rochester, he began researching methods for safely harnessing ionizing radiation, an interest that he would make his life’s work.

After completing the Rochester program, Koontz entered the field of health physics, which concerns the safe use of radiation in various settings. Koontz would focus mostly on nuclear reactor safety. Health physics was in its infancy when Koontz entered the field, and many of the professional standards for the discipline were established by Koontz and other early practitioners. A considerable number of the early nuclear safety procedures and much of the early radiation-detecting equipment employed are used to this day.

After receiving rudimentary training in health physics, Koontz relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he began work at Atomics International, a division of North American Aviation, at its Canoga Park nuclear reactor construction and research facility. There with a team of scientists, Koontz conducted a wide array of studies into reactor safety and radiation detection. His employment at the company coincided with the most productive phase of his professional career, during which his research team set the standard by which all nuclear facilities would be judged. From the 1950’s to the early 1970’s, Koontz coauthored scores of scholarly articles and research projects, including studies on nuclear safety, reports on the characteristics of aerosols produced by sodium fires, examinations of errors in measurements of building leakage due to dynamic temperature effects, assessments that helped to predict and control leakage through cracks and capillaries in reinforced concrete buildings used to house reactors, and assorted items related to liquid-metal fast-breeder reactor accidents. During this period, Koontz regularly attended professional meetings relevant to his field, such as the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Air Cleaning Conferences, to learn from his peers and to share his research with others.

In the 1970’s, Koontz spent less time researching as he assumed control of all contract work on portions of the massive Clinch River Breeder Reactor project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, under the direction of the Atomic Energy Commission. Sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactor technology was then in its early stages. In theory, the facility would “breed” more fuel than it consumed, making it a cost-effective energy source. Developers of the Clinch River project hoped that its successful construction would serve as a prototype for other nuclear facilities across the nation. Interest in the project waxed and waned depending on the presidential administration in office and overall public support for nuclear power. Cost overruns and concerns regarding the safety of nuclear energy ultimately undermined the project. Originally fixed with a $400 million construction cost, the project’s price continued to climb over the next decade. By the dawn of the 1980’s, more than $1 billion had been spent on the still-uncompleted Tennessee reactor. In 1983, Congress cut funding for the project, leading to its eventual abandonment.

Despite the setback, Koontz remained with the same employer for most of his career (although North American Aviation had merged with Rockwell-Standard Corporation in 1967). Later in life, Koontz worked at Rockwell’s Hanford Operations in Richland, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. He died in 1997.

Impact

Koontz overcame obstacles of racism to become one of the leading figures in his chosen field, devoting his professional career to harnessing the power of nuclear energy and making it safe for public use. His research helped lay the foundation for the discipline of health physics.

During the 1980’s, the U.S. government largely abandoned its support for nuclear power in part because of concerns over reactor safety. Incidents such as the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, prompted a reassessment of the nation’s commitment to nuclear power. In the early twenty-first century, however, the volatile price of oil has encouraged many to reconsider nuclear energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. The work of Roscoe Koontz and other nuclear pioneers will no doubt play an integral role in any future U.S. plans to develop nuclear reactors.

Bibliography

Carwell, Hattie. Blacks in Science: Astrophysicist to Zoologist. Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1977. Carwell is a health physicist by training and an active promoter of the achievements of African American scientists. Her discussion of Koontz stems from personal communication with the scientist, who preferred to keep his achievements private.

Cember, Herman, and Thomas E. Johnson. Introduction to Health Physics. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. An important textbook that discusses the roles that Koontz and others played in the field of health physics. Highlights how far the discipline has come since the early days of the profession, when rules and regulations were often created on the fly.

Rovai, Alfred P., Louis B. Gallien, and Helen R. Stiff-Williams, eds. Closing the African American Achievement Gap in Higher Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2007. Explores the struggles faced by black college students today, owing in part to a legacy of discrimination. Underscores how remarkable Koontz’s achievements were in an era of widespread racism and state-mandated segregation.