HEVESY NUCLEAR MEDICINE LECTURE
HenryN. Wagner,Jr.
William Osler, the medical sage of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School wrote: “In science, credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man
to whom the idea first occurs.―This year's Hevesy Nu clear Pioneer awardee, a true son of the Johns Hopkins,
is both a person to whom ideas first occur and, especially, one who, in the name of nuclear medicine, convinces the world of their veracity and usefulness. PERSON
Henry Nicholas Wagner, Jr., was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 12, 1927. He attended Baltimore schools, including Calvert Hall, from which he graduated in 1944. While at Calvert Hall, he developed an interest in medicine,
in part through
reading about the great
fighters against infectious disease, and determined to become a physician. After one year in the Coast Guard
Academy, he matriculated in the College of Johns Hopkins University, receiving an A.B. degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1948. During the summer following his graduation, he began to work with Dr. Curt Richter, a well-known neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. This research, which extended through three more summers, was concerned with methods for mea 934
suring visual responses in animals and with environ mental influences on central nervous system function. In 1948 Henry entered the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, graduating with an M.D. degree (Alpha Omega Alpha) in 1952. In his third year of medical school he married Anne Barrett, whom he had met three years previously at a scientific meeting when she was a junior at Mt. Saint Agnes College. One year later, their first child (Henry Nicholas III) was born, followed by Mary Randall, John Mark, and Anne Eliz abeth. He joined the Osler Medical Service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on graduation from medical school, first as an intern and then as an assistant resident. During this period he wrote several papers, stemming from his house-staff experience, on the clinical treatment of in fectious diseases. In 1955, Henry Wagner joined Robert Berliner's group at the NIH as a clinical associate. Among his colleagues there were Eugene Braunwald and Jack Or loff. His work focused on autonomic vasoregulatory in fluences on the kidney, particularly on responses to antidiuretic hormone. Following this, Henry went to the Hammersmith Hospital for a year and worked in the Endocrine Unit under Russell Frazer. Here, through a study of iodine THE JOURNAL
OF NUCLEAR
MEDICINE