Clayton Samuel White or Sam White was an American physician at Lovelace Medical Center, who studied the effects of nuclear blasts and shock effects on people.
Early life and education
White was born in Fort Collins, Colorado of Maude Elizabeth and Alpha Albert White, farmers who ran a lumber yard, never attended high school, and prized education. He grew up in nearby Wellington, Colorado, where his father was the mayor. He had one brother, five years younger, the late U.S. Supreme CourtJustice Byron White. When White attended Wellington high school, he rented 25 acres to make money growing beets with his brother. He went to the University of Colorado Boulder on a scholarship, which the state offered to all Colorado high school valedictorians at the time, and studied psychology. He starred in football, and in 1934 graduated aged 22 years. He continued studying psychology and earned a baccalaureate in physiology at University of Oxford in England, which allowed him to start medical school at the University of Colorado upon returning. Graduating in 1942, he joined the Navy.
Career
White did medical research on "oxygen masks, liquid oxygen converters, and other high-altitude equipment" during World War II at the Air Force's Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. It was directed by William Randolph Lovelace II, a surgeon from the Mayo Clinic whom he became friends with. After the war Lovelace asked to join him at his uncle's Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1947 to start a foundation for research. He made White his first hire, and director of research at what was then called the "Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research". In 1951, White started "to study the blast and shock effects of big explosions" through their first big contract, by the Atomic Energy Commission. He had no competition at the time, and found out, that blast effects were important even in nuclear explosions and dangerous. He developed mathematical formulas to explain the differential explosive effects had on buildings in 1961, and coauthored 3 other major reports of the environmental consequences of nuclear explosions with a focus on early effects of blasts and radiation, the progression of an explosion, and graphs depicting the relationship between the effects of blasts and the distance of material from Ground Zero in 1960, in 1964, and a "Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer" in 1962. In 1959, he and Lovelace performed the physical and psychological tests on the 32 original Project Mercury astronaut candidates, out of which 7 were chosen, including John Glenn. When, in 1965, Lovelace died, White succeeded him as director of the foundation. From 1974 to 1979 White was president of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, but he missed Albuquerque and returned.
Personal life
White was married with Margaret Reeve for 62 years, and had two daughters Meredith, of Manhattan, Sharon, of Washington and one son, Stephen, of Nocona, Texas. He died aged 91 of respiratory complications at Lovelace Medical Center.
