National Radium Institute

Last updated
National Radium Institute
AbbreviationNRI
FormationSeptember 1913
DissolvedJanuary 1920
Purpose Radium development
HeadquartersDenver, Colorado

The National Radium Institute (NRI) was an organization incorporated in 1913 to extract radium from US domestic sources for use in cancer treatment and possible industrial use and in the process to develop more efficient methods of radium extraction. It was headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The institute was a joint project initiated by Dr. Howard Kelly a physician at Johns Hopkins University, and James S. Douglas, a mining executive and philanthropist, in cooperation with the US Bureau of Mines. [1] [2]

The Institute's main radium plant in Denver was closed down in April 1917 and the NRI was officially dissolved as a corporation in Delaware in late 1919 and in Colorado on 20 January 1920. NRI's plants and sites changed hands and uses several times in the following decades. [3] [4] In 1988, the institute's last two surviving buildings were demolished "due to extensive radiological contamination". [5]

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References

  1. Lutz, Stephen; Chow, Edward; Hoskin, Peter (2013). Radiation Oncology in Palliative Cancer Care, p. 5. John Wiley & Sons.
  2. Parsons, Charles L. (November 1915). Bulletin 104 - U.S. Bureau of Mines; Extraction and Recovery of Radium, Uranium and Vanadium from Carnotite (1 ed.). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. pp.  8 . Retrieved 7 June 2014.
  3. Smith, Marius (1922). Guidebook of the Western United States: Part E. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Route, Geological Survey Bulletin 707 Issue 707. USGS.
  4. National Radium Institute, Denver Colorado. Historic-Structures.com
  5. US National Park Service. "Historic American Engineering Record: National Radium Institute, Denver, Colorado