MIRD Recognizes Atkins with Loevinger-Berman Award.

H arold L. Atkins, MD, was presented with the LoevingerBerman Award for excellence in the field of internal dosimetry on Sunday, June 15, at the SNM Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. The award was established in 1999 by the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee in honor of Robert Loevinger and Mones Berman, who formulated the MIRD schema for internal dose calculations. The award is given in recognition of excellence pertaining to the field of internal dosimetry as it relates to nuclear medicine through research and development, significant publications, and contributions that advanced understanding of internal dosimetry in relationship to risk and therapeutic efficacy. Previous award winners were Roger J. Cloutier (1999); Dandamudi V. Rao, PhD (2000); Keith F. Eckerman, PhD (2001); Sven-Erik Strand, PhD (2002); John W. Poston, Sr., PhD (2003); Roger W. Howell, PhD (2004); James S. Robertson, MD, PhD (2005); Gordon L. Brownell, PhD (2006); and Evelyn Watson (2007). Atkins was recognized for his many contributions to the development and testing of new radiopharmaceuticals and procedures for novel and important diagnostic and therapeutic applications. He was a member of the SNM MIRD Committee from 1975 to 1994. During this time, he was the first author on 5 MIRD reports spanning the years 1975 (MIRD Dose Estimate Report No. 3. Tc-SC in Various Liver Conditions) to 1993 (MIRD Dose Estimate Report No. 17. Inhaled Kr-81m Gas in Lung Imaging). He was the second author on 2 additional dose estimate reports: no. 8 in 1976 on 99mTc-pertechnetate and no. 12 in 1984 on 99mTc-diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid. His medical education began with an MD from Harvard (Boston, MA; 1952), followed by a straight medical internship at Yale (New Haven, CT; 1953), radiology residency at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA; 1953–1956), 3 y as a member of the radiology faculty at Yale (1956–1959), and 4 y in nuclear medicine and radiation therapy at Columbia University (New York, NY; 1959–1963). He then joined the staff at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, NY) as an associate scientist in the Medical Department. He moved ahead rapidly and became senior scientist and Nuclear Medicine Division head in 1973. He stayed in that role through 1978, with overlapping responsibility as a professor of radiology at the State University of New York (Stony Brook). At Stony Brook he was also chief of nuclear medicine through 1994, when he retired as a professor emeritus. It was during his years at Brookhaven that the laboratory, including the Medical Department, made its greatest contribution to the development and testing of new radiopharmaceuticals. 18F2DG for heart, brain, and cancer imaging and 201Tl for heart studies were developed during the period in which he directed the program. He received the Berson-Yalow Award from the Greater New York Chapter of the SNM in 1993 and the Lawrence D. Redway Award for Medical Writing in 1999 from the Medical Society of New York for the publication Emission Tomography. He served SNM in many roles, including as treasurer, member of the editorial board of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, and trustee.