Special Issues of AMR on the Occasion of the 85th Birthday of Harold M. Swartz

[...]articles in the second issue pay homage to Hal’s contributions to the EPR instrumental developments needed to perform in vivo measurements (including technical advancements in resonators, magnets, and microwave bridges as well as software advances, human factors considerations, and the development of paramagnetic probes to use for in vivo measurements). The Army was very interested in his research in radiation biology and in due course supported his additional training in radiation biophysics (when he earned an MSPH from University of North Carolina@Chapel Hill) and in the effects of oxygen on cells (when he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry/biophysics from Georgetown University). Hal has won several prestigious awards for his outstanding scientific contributions, e.g., he received The International Zavoisky Award (2005); he was a founding board member of the Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (SMRM) which eventually became the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, to which he was appointed as a Fellow (1997) as well as of the International EPR Society (2005); he was awarded a Silver Medal in Biomedicine from the International EPR Society (1994) and a Silver Medal from the SMRM (1993); he was named the Alma Hass Milham Distinguished Chair in Clinical Medicine at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth (2012). While instrumental developments associated with EPR will be featured in Issue 2, such developments have gone hand-in-hand with the evolution of the knowledge about the effects of oxygen on biological systems and the need to measure them to realize Hal’s other passion and major contribution: developing clinical applications of EPR to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of human disease.