engineering

Hal Anger

Hal Anger is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hal Anger rather than just read about it. In short: Hal Oscar Anger (May 20, 1920 – October 31, 2005) was an American electrical engineer and biophysicist at Donner Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, known for his invention of the gamma camera. In all, Anger held 15 patents, many of them for work at the Ernest O.

Key takeaways

Hal Anger belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hal Anger to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hal Anger from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hal Oscar Anger (May 20, 1920 – October 31, 2005) was an American electrical engineer and biophysicist at Donner Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, known for his invention of the gamma camera. In all, Anger held 15 patents, many of them for work at the Ernest O. Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. Anger received several awards in recognition of his inventions and their contributions to the field of nuclear medicine. Anger died in Berkeley, California.

Career In 1957, he invented the scintillation camera, known also as the gamma camera or Anger camera. Anger also developed the well counter, widely used in laboratory tests to measure radioactivity in samples. Anger also developed a multi-plane tomographic radiation scanner using the Anger camera and a focussed radiation collimator. The first useful scintillation camera was developed by Anger at an AEC-funded laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, California. Consequently, the patent rights on the invention were owned by the U.S. Government. However, Anger's supervisors at the lab were well connected with the head of the AEC, Glenn Seaborg, and prevailed on the AEC to release the patent rights to Anger personally. Anger retained patent counsel to file a U.S. patent application on his invention, and this application eventually matured into U.S. Patent 3,011,057, issued in November 1961. While his patent was pending, Anger tried unsuccessfully to interest nuclear instrument companies in taking a license on a non-exclusive basis to produce and sell the Anger camera. He eventually granted an exclusive license on the '057 patent to Nuclear-Chicago Corporation (NCC), in Des Plaines, Illinois. NCC successfully developed a commercially useful version of the Anger Camera and began marketing it to nuclear medical departments of hospitals in the United States. NCC's commercial sales of the Anger Camera grew substantially over the years and Anger became modestly wealthy from the royalties that he received under the exclusive license agreement. NCC was eventually acquired by G.D. Searle & Co, of Skokie, Illinois, and operated as a wholly owned subsidiary. Nuclear-Chicago Corporation's exclusivity on marketing the Anger scintillation camera was eventually challenged by the introduction of a competing version of the Anger camera by Picker Corporation. NCC and Anger sued Picker for infringement of the '057 patent, and Picker counterclaimed for invalidity of the '057 patent. Picker also filed a proceeding in the Atomic Energy Commission, challenging the legitimacy of the AEC's release of the patent rights to Anger, and requesting a compulsory license under the '057 patent. The AEC proceeding was decided in favor of Anger and NCC, and the patent infringement lawsuit was eventually settled by the grant of a sublicense agreement to Picker. Other competitors later emerged and further litigation on the '057 patent was initiated. NCC was eventually sold to Siemens Corporation and Siemens continued to develop the technology of the Anger Camera and to market the device worldwide.

Philanthropy In 2006, the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Education and Research Foundation received $6 million from the Hal Anger Estate, the largest gift ever received for advancing the field of nuclear medicine, leading to the development of a Hal Anger Prize and Lecture.

References

External links Who Named It article on Anger "Nuclear medicine". The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Archived from the original on 30 September 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hal Anger

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hal Anger claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hal Anger before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hal Anger ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hal Anger

In research: Hal Anger appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hal Anger in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hal Anger is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1920 births, 2005 deaths, 20th-century American engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hal Anger outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hal Anger in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hal Anger means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hal Anger out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hal Anger in simple terms?

Why does Hal Anger matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hal Anger?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hal Anger.