This collection contains experiment documentation, research notes, scholarly writing, technical reports, publications, correspondence, and artifacts belonging to Christian James Lambertsen, primarily created during his tenure at the University of Pennsylvania. Primary subjects include decompression, oxygenation, diving, decompression sickness, diving physiology, and underwater breathing apparatus. Documentation from the University of Pennsylvania's Environmental Biomedical Stress Data Center and the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society are also included. Numerous photographs, slides, films, and audio recordings are part of the collection, many of which need to be reformatted in order to be used. Materials range in date from 1930 to 2004, the bulk of the papers documenting Lambertsen's experiments are between 1970 and 1995.
Christian James (C. J.) Lambertsen was born in Westfield, New Jersey on May 15, 1917. He received a B.S. degree in Biology from Rutgers University in 1939, an M.D. in Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943, and an honorary D.Sc. in Medicine from Northwestern University in 1977. His research interests included undersea, atmospheric, aerospace, and industrial environmental physiology, as well as human environmental toxicology and the extremes of human physiologic performance.
In 1940, Lambertsen designed the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU), which was the first widely used, closed-circuit Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) in the United States. The LARU was adopted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and used in the latter stages of WWII.
Lambertsen joined the staff of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. Primarily a professor of pharmacology, he became the director of the university's Institute for Environmental Medicine in 1968, and the founding director of the Environmental Biomedical Stress Data Center in 1985.
Lambertsen collaborated with numerous government organizations, including the National Research Council, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, the U.S. Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the U.S. Navy Medical Advisory Panel. He received numerous awards and honors for his work. Lambertsen died on February 11, 2011 in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
Organized into the following series: Predictive Studies, 1961-2004; Decompression, 1930-2001; Oxygen Toxicity, 1940-2003; Isobaric Counterdiffusion, 1973-2001; Publications, 1944-2004; Breathing Apparatus. 1972-1987; Performance Measurement System (PMS), 1987-1990; Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, 1984-1985; Space and Aviation Medicine, 1991-2002.
