Sunderman, F. William, 1898-2003.Frederick William Sunderman
F. William Sunderman, Doctor and Scientist, Dies at 104
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Dr. F.William Sunderman, a doctor and scientist who lived a remarkable century and beyond — making medical advances, playing his Stradivarius violin at Carnegie Hall at 99 and being honored as the nation's oldest worker at 100 — died on March 9 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 104.
Dr. Sunderman worked eight-hour days until a few weeks ago.
He developed a method for measuring glucose in the blood, the Sunderman Sugar Tube, and was one of the first doctors to use insulin to bring a patient out of a diabetic coma. He established quality-control techniques for medical laboratories that ended the wide variation in the results of laboratories doing the same tests.
He taught at several medical schools and founded and edited the journal Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science. In World War II, he was a medical director for the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
Dr. Sunderman was president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists and a founding governor of the College of American Pathologists. He also helped organize the Association of Clinical Scientists and was its first president.
Besides writing more than 300 scientific papers and 16 scientific books, he wrote books about his many other interests, including chamber music, travel and photography.
His scientific imagination was suggested by his discovery of a high incidence of lead poisoning among police officers. In his 1988 autobiography, "A Time to Remember," he wrote that he went to the shooting range and found that bullets were lighter after they left the gun. The lost lead had gone into the officers' lungs, Dr. Sunderman concluded.
In the 1930's, he was asked to study the effects of high-voltage electricity. He visited prisoners on death row at a Pennsylvania penitentiary. He took blood samples from their arms before execution and from their hearts afterward.
As medical director of the Manhattan Project, he investigated the effects of nickel carbonyl, a highly toxic gas, and developed an antidote, testing it on himself first.
Frederick William Sunderman was born on Oct. 23, 1898, near Altoona, Pa. His father, a baker, advised him to do three things: go to church each Sunday, buy stock in the Pennsylvania Railroad and vote a straight Republican ticket. The railroad went bankrupt in 1970, but he faithfully did the rest.
Dr. Sunderman saw Halley's comet twice, once in 1910 in Pennsylvania and again 76 years later while doing research in New Zealand.
His mother bought him a violin when he was 5, and as a teenager he earned pocket money by playing at silent movies. By the time he enrolled at Gettysburg College, he had a dance band.
His love affair with music never ended. He collected museum-quality antique instruments and practiced an hour a day on his violin, made in 1694 by Antonio Stradivari, who named it the St. Sebastian.
Dr. Sunderman traveled to Austria and Germany in summers to play with professional musicians. In the 1960's, he discovered lost chamber music manuscripts by Rachmaninoff and Borodin in a Moscow music store.
Dr. Sunderman finally made it to Carnegie Hall in 1998, playing a duet with his son, Dr. F. William Sunderman Jr., in a concert of classical music performed by doctors.
Besides his son, Dr. Sunderman is survived by three grandchildren; and a great granddaughter.
In 1924, Dr. Sunderman married Clara Louise Baily. She died in 1972. Besides their surviving son, they had two other children, Louise, who died at 3, and Joel, who died at 24. In 1980, Dr. Sunderman married Martha Lee Biscoe. She died in 2000.
He received an M.D. and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and his career began when he was an intern at Pennsylvania Hospital, where it also ended. Until recently, Dr. Sunderman showed up there each weekday to edit the journal he founded.
Among the many stops in between was the Centers for Disease Control. When it was part of the Public Health Service in the 1940's, Dr. Sunderman was chief of clinical pathology.
Dr. Sunderman routinely turned adversity to his advantage. For example, while spending 1937 in a hospital recovering from tuberculosis, he fell in love with photography and later wrote a book about it.
In 1999, Green Thumb Inc., a federal program to train and honor workers, recognized Dr. Sunderman as the nation's oldest worker. At 100, he was also still driving. Accepting the honor, Dr. Sunderman mentioned that he had maintained his sense of balance in life through music.
Because Dr. Sunderman was constantly asked the secret of longevity, he decided to approach the question scientifically.
He tried to draw blood from 600-year-old tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, but was unsuccessful.
Less scientifically, he turned to his experience and reported that a good diet, the absence of stress, an active sex life and daily work seemed to help.
F. William Sunderman, 104, doctor
By Gayle Ronan Sims
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff WriterF. William Sunderman, 104, a physician, author, teacher, photographer, editor, scientist, musician and, until recently, the oldest working person in the United States, died Sunday at his home in Center City.
Until a few weeks ago, he would arrive at his office at Pennsylvania Hospital every weekday by 8 a.m., dressed in a three-piece suit, and switch to his white lab coat before beginning his workday. His job was reading manuscripts from the Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science, the medical journal he started 30 years ago and still edited. He sometimes took a break and climbed onto his exercise bicycle. He would work until 4:30 or 5 p.m.
In the evenings he played his 17th-century Stradivarius violin; most summers he traveled to Germany and Austria to perform with professional musicians. He performed a solo on his 100th birthday at his alma mater, Gettysburg College (Class of 1919). He also played a duet at Carnegie Hall with his violinist son, F. William Sunderman Jr., now 71, in 1998.
During a career that witnessed nearly every major medical advancement of the 20th century, the doctor had a practical reason for continuing to work.
He said during an interview in 1999: "I want to live. I have too many interests to retire." He believed the ultimate secret to longevity is remaining actively engaged in life. "You must have innate curiosity," he said.
Dr. Sunderman was born in Altoona in 1898, when the country was celebrating the Spanish-American War victory and news traveled by Morse code. He saw Halley's comet twice - once as a youth with his father in Central Pennsylvania in 1910, and 76 years later as a scientist doing research in New Zealand.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1923 and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Penn.
During the 1930s, Dr. Sunderman directed the chemistry division of the William Pepper Laboratory at Penn, developing methods for measurement of blood cholesterol, glucose and chloride.
In 1938, during his convalescence from pulmonary tuberculosis, he practiced his violin and became an amateur photographer. When war broke out, he was unable to serve in the military because of his history of lung disease.
He worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II, investigating the effects of nickel carbonyl on workers who were using highly toxic gas to make atomic weapons, eventually developing an antidote for nickel carbonyl poisoning. He was his first human test subject. "I took the first dose," he said. "I'd worked around the laboratory animals so much that I knew it would work."
After the war, he worked at several medical institutions, including the Cleveland Clinic, the M.D. Anderson Hospital Cancer Center in Texas, and Emory University. In 1951, he became professor of medicine and director of the division of metabolic research at Jefferson Medical College (later Thomas Jefferson University Hospital), where he investigated new techniques to diagnose diseases of the thyroid, adrenal and other endocrine organs.
Dr. Sunderman cowrote more than 300 scientific papers and 16 scientific books. He also wrote several books on chamber music, travel and photography, plus an autobiography, A Time to Remember. Dr. Sunderman received numerous awards and in 1999 was recognized as America's oldest worker following a nationwide search by Experience Works Inc. (formerly Green Thumb).
In 1924, Dr. Sunderman married Clara Louise Baily; she died in 1972. They had two other children in addition to William Jr.: a daughter, Louise, who died at age 3, and a son, Joel, who died at age 24.
In 1980, Dr. Sunderman married Martha Lee Biscoe; she died in 2000.
In addition to his son, Dr. Sunderman is survived by three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion in Center City. Burial will follow in Washington Memorial Chapel Churchyard in Valley Forge.
Memorial donations may be made to Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion, 2110 Chestnut St., Philadelphia 19103
F. William Sunderman M.D., Ph. D., Sc.D., 100 (died at 104 in 2003)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I have always taken to heart that profound statement of Voltaire: How infinitesimal is the importance of anything I can do, but how infinitely important it is that I should do it.
Frederick William Sunderman was born October 23, 1898, in Juniata, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Altoona. “I carry with me the recollections of a joyous childhood in a happy home atmosphere,” he says.
A brilliant student, Dr. Sunderman was valedictorian of his high school class and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Gettysburg College. He attended the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania on a Governor’s Scholarship. Following his internship, he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. Gettysburg College later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree.
Music became an integral part of his life from the age of five. His mother bought him a violin, engaged a teacher to give him lessons, and frequently reminded him that “practice makes perfect.” Although he was a serious classical musician, he earned money accompanying silent movies, and playing in burlesque theaters and at college dances. He regularly hosts musical evenings in his home, and he has played in chamber music concerts most of his life, including a performance at Carnegie Hall. He is a collector of antique instruments and bows. And ever heeding his mother’s advice, he continues to practice an hour each day on his much-loved “St. Sebastian” violin, crafted and named by Stradivari in 1694.
In the course of his distinguished career, Dr. Sunderman is credited for treating the first diabetic coma patient in the U.S. (and perhaps the world) with a crude form of insulin. He organized the country’s first clinical laboratory at Pennsylvania Hospital, and invented two instruments for measuring serum electrolyes that were distributed worldwide. He developed testing to determine the precision and accuracy of analytical procedures in clinical laboratories—a monthly self-audit and advisory Proficiency Testing Service—that continued for 36 years and was utilized by more than 2,500 labs worldwide.
During World War II, Dr. Sunderman was Medical Director of Explosive Research, Carnegie Institute of Technology and Los Alamos Laboratories—better known as the Manhattan 8 Project. He later assisted in setting up the medical department at Brookhaven National Laboratories for nuclear research, served as medical consultant for the space project at Redstone Arsenal from 1947 to 1969, and headed up the clinical pathology department at the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta. He has taught in the medical schools of eight universities.
For 45 years, Dr. Sunderman’s lab pursued an active investigative program directed in large part toward metal toxicology—nickel in particular. Nickel is used extensively by the international chemical industry and in nuclear energy applications. He eventually discovered an antidote to nickel carbonyl poisoning—sodium diethyldithiocarbamate—for which he holds a patent. Dithiocarb has also been tested in France for the treatment of AIDS.
Over the past decade, Dr. Sunderman has attempted to identify scientifically factors in mitigating the effects of old age. He has looked at heredity, diet, lack of stress, living in a non-toxic environment, and a happy home life as contributing factors. “No easy answers are to be found,” he says. “With it all, I am convinced that one of the most important items for longevity is the maintenance of a daily work schedule.”
Dr. Sunderman has traveled to 175 countries as a lecturer in medical schools and as a consultant for international chemical and oil companies. He has authored 350 papers and 45 books, including an autobiography published last year. His awards and professional associations are legion.
“My days of active medical practice have passed,” Dr. Sunderman says, “and I am able to devote my scientific energies to the furtherance of medical education. I continue the editorship of the Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science, which I started with the first edition in July 1971. I continue to organize and direct seminars, workshops, and scientific field trips for the Association of Clinical Scientists.”
“I have learned about the joys of academic life, the excitement in the quest for knowledge, and the triumphs and disappointments of research. However I have always maintained a sense of balance through music, especially through the enthusiastic playing of the great chamber music composers.”
Dr. Sunderman’s autobiography, A Time to Remember, published in October 1998, has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Copies are available through the Institute for Clinical Science at (215) 829-7068. $35 plus shipping.
