Membership

2013 Awardee

The William D. Wagner Award, established in 2003, is presented annually to a person in the field of national and international worker health and safety who is an outstanding example of commitment and dedication to the creation and dissemination of occupational exposure values (OEVs).

The 2013 recipient of the William D. Wagner Award is Thomas S. Tenforde, PhD.

Dr. Tenforde earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University in 1962 and a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. He most recently served as president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) in Bethesda, MD from 2002 until his retirement in 2012. He served as the fourth NCRP president since its earliest predecessor organization was formed in 1929. Dr. Tenforde has more than 40 years of research and management experience in the fields of biological effects of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, environmental and occupational health sciences, medical applications of radiation, surface chemistry of normal and cancer cells, and biological spectroscopy. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 journal articles, book chapters and technical reports; participated in national and international professional organizations, and received many awards and recognition for his work.

From 1969 to 1988 Dr. Tenforde conducted research on the biological effects of magnetic fields as a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Before his election as NCRP President, Dr. Tenforde was a Fellow at Batelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA from 1988 to 2002. While there, he promoted the production of radioisotopes and isotope products for medical, industrial, and research purposes, and championed work in the environmental and biological sciences. In 1995, Dr. Tenforde developed a multidisciplinary program for the production of radioisotopes and isotope products used in medical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. He and his staff were cited for an important award from the Department of Energy for this program to produce the medical isotope yttrium-90, now used worldwide for the treatment of cancer.

Dr. Tenforde has served on more than 30 national and international committees and boards, and has been a reviewer for federal agencies, private organizations, and 25 refereed journals. He is the author or coauthor of more than 200 journal articles, book chapters and technical reports. Dr. Tenforde served on the ACGIH^® Threshold Limit Values for Physical Agents (TLV^®-PA) Committee from 1990 to 2012 as an expert on all aspects of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. In addition to his service on the TLV^®-PA Committee, he was a member of many scientific societies, including the Radiation Research Society, the Health Physics Society, the Bioelectromagnetics Society (President, 1987 to 1988), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Biophysical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Society of Nuclear Medicine, and Sigma Xi. He served as a member of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) from 1992 through 2004.

Dr. Tenforde's scientific contributions to national and international worker health and safety throughout his professional career make him a worthy recipient, and it is with honor that ACGIH^® awards him the 2013 William D. Wagner Award.

Previous Award Recipients