James Laverre Whittenberger papers

James Laverre Whittenberger (1914-2007), S.B., University of Chicago; M.D., 1938, University of Chicago, was the James Stevens Simmons Professor of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health and director of the Kresge Center for Environmental Health at Harvard from 1958 to 1983.

James Laverre Whittenberger was born in Dahinda, Illinois in 1914. He received an S.B. from the University of Chicago, and an M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1938. He interned at Cincinnati General Hospital and held research fellowships at the University of Chicago, the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory of the Boston City Hospital, and New York University Medical School. As a fellow in surgery at the University of Chicago, Whittenberger worked under Charles B. Huggins, future Nobel Laureate in Medicine. He joined the Harvard School of Public Health as an Associate in Physiology in 1946, working under Cecil Drinker, former Dean and Professor of Physiology, and Philip Drinker, inventor of the iron lung. During World War II and immediately afterwards, Whittenberger served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1951 he became a professor of physiology and seven years later was named James Stevens Simmons Professor of Public Health. He served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1966 to 1972 and then as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Health until 1978.

Trained as a physician, Whittenberger focused on applying a public health approach to environmental health issues. Early in his career he studied respiratory mechanics and the use of artificial ventilation in polio patients. Later, he examined pollution’s effects on the physiology of respiratory systems. In 1956 he advised the government health service of Argentina in the management of respiratory problems in polio patients during an epidemic. Whittenberger also served as a consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Children’s Hospital, the Chemical Corps, the Massachusetts Civil Defense Organization and the Veterans Hospital at Rutland, Massachusetts. Whittenberger was the founder and former Director of the Kresge Center for Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health, now called the Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Whittenberger served on numerous committees and panels for agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Research Council, Food and Drug Administration, National Center for Health Statistics, the President’s Biomedical Research Panel, and the Ford Foundation. From 1969 to 1970, he was a member of the President’s Task Force on Air Pollution, White House. In the 1970s, he co-chaired the first and second Task Forces for Research Planning in Environmental Health Sciences for NIEHS. This work led to the publication of the reports "Man's Health and the Environment: Some Research Needs" and "Human Health and the Environment: Some Research Needs," intended to help national planning efforts in environmental health research.

After retiring from HSPH in 1980, Whittenberger became the director of the Southern Occupational Health Center, University of California, Irvine. He also served as Professor in Residence in the Department of Community and Environmental Medicine, College of Medicine, Irvine, and in the Division of Environmental Sciences, School of Public Health, UCLA.

Whittenberger married Jean Margaret Stockfisch and they had two children, John and Peter. Whittenberger died March 17, 2007.