Harold Lamport Papers

Harold Lamport was born on February 16, 1908 in New York City to Arthur M. and Sadie Lamport. His initial life's goal was to become a mathematical physicist and his academic course took him to Harvard University where he majored in mathematics and physics. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1929 and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. Lamport completed post-graduate work in physics and mathematics at the University of Göttingen (Germany) before studying medicine at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1934. After his residency at Bethel Israel Hospital in New York City, he became Director of the Richard Koster Research Laboratory from 1937 to 1939. Then from 1939 to 1942 he was a member of Columbia University's Medical School in the Department of Neurology. He joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology at Yale University's School of Medicine in 1942, lecturing on the application of mathematics and physics to physiology and medicine. Lamport was appointed research professor of physiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Graduate School of Biological Sciences at City University of New York in 1966 and remained there until his death.

During his tenure at Yale during World War II, he worked on the pneumatic lever suit, an improved anti-gravity suite worn by airplane pilots to prevent blackouts at high speeds. The technology was later improved into the suits worn by NASA astronauts. Lamport's high altitude flying suits (Anti-G suits) used in World War II by U.S. Air Force pilots were displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in 1976. Another outgrowth of this work was a portable iron lung/emergency respirator developed with his colleague Ralph D. Eichorn. It was made of rubberized cloth for military use in the battlefield. Also during World War II, he worked as a research associate and as a medical director of military research projects at the Pierce Foundation Laboratory of Hygiene in New Haven, CT. Here he was responsible for research on government contracts involving aviation blackout protection, concussions, and ultrasound and wound ballistics.

In the 1950s Lamport, along with Eichorn and Herbert F. Newman, pioneered the use of high-frequency sound waves to disintegrate gall stones, thus eliminating the need for surgery. He repeated this success with kidney stones in 1955. For this work he received the ultrasonic research award from the Bircher Foundation in 1955, and the Medical Ultrasonics Award from the American Institute of Ultrasonics in 1956.

Lamport was not only known as an excellent medical researcher, but also as a highly sought after professor and writer. His prolific work in the field of hemodynamics, or the study of pressure and rate of the flow of blood in small bloodvessels using mathematical applications, can be found in a vast array of physiology textbooks and professional journals. At the time of his death, he was investigating the study of abortifacients and pre-conceptual gender determination. His was an attitude of the renaissance thinker, of mastering areas of pathology and physiology through scientific study and methodological rigor.

A distinguished scientist and educator, Lamport many professional affiliations included membership in the American Association of the Advancement of Science (Life Fellow); New York Academy of Medicine (Life Fellow); American Engineering Society; American Heart Association; and the New York Academy of Science. He served on several medical and scientific boards and maintained a close relationship with Mount Sinai Medical School and its Academic Council until his death on December 27, 1975. Several prestigious physiology and medicine awards are given in his honor.