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C H RI S T IA N J . LA M B ER T S E N
1917–2011
Elected in 1977
“For contributions to environmental science and to
diving physiology and technology.”
BY TOM HAWKINS
SUBMITTED BY THE HOME SECRETARY
CHRISTIAN J. LAMBERTSEN, a distinguished scientist,
medical doctor, inventor, environmentalist, pioneer in undersea
and aerospace medicine, and professor at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine for his entire adult life, died
on February 11, 2011, at the age of 93. He excused himself
from daily activities at the university only in the past several
years, when he was forced to slow down because of physical
incapacitation. He was held in especially high regard by the
U.S. Navy SEALs, who considered him a friend, mentor, and
“Father of U.S. Combat Swimming,” a title he very much
appreciated.
Dr. Lambertsen received a B.S. degree from Rutgers
University in 1938 and his M.D. degree from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1943. His extraordinary lifetime of
accomplishments began during involvement with the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II when, as a
23-year-old medical student, he presented his invention of
a self-contained underwater swimming apparatus. Once
developed, it was called the Lambertsen Lung and eventually
the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (or simply
LARU). The LARU would enable a well-trained swimmer
to work bubble-free underwater and thus operate around
151
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152 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
objective areas without detection from above. The OSS
immediately understood the LARU’s potential and quickly
embraced the concept.
Upon completion of his medical training, Dr. Lambertsen
was commissioned in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and
attached for service with OSS, specifically to take advantage
of his expertise in underwater operations. He became
instrumental in establishing the OSS Maritime Unit as the
unit’s medical officer and primary trainer of its operational
swimmers, including development of tactical functions of the
LARU and a swimmer submersible. After the surrender of
Japan and before being reassigned to hospital duty in Atlanta,
Georgia, Dr. Lambertsen did everything he could to protect
and save the Maritime Unit’s diving equipment, since OSS
was disbanded almost immediately in September 1945.
Dr. Lambertsen joined the University of Pennsylvania
medical faculty in 1946 and became a professor of
pharmacology in 1952. While a faculty member, he continued
to combine diving research and underwater equipment
developments and began a one-man campaign to introduce
OSS diving capabilities to the Navy’s Underwater Demolition
Teams (UDTs), the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. In 1947 he wrote a lengthy letter to the
chief of naval operations summarizing underwater swimmer
capabilities.
The UDTs fully adopted OSS capabilities, which were called
simply “Submersible Operations” and were immediately
classified to protect the tactics and techniques being used.
This was a seminal period for the UDTs, since the LARU and
OSS tactics vastly improved their maritime special operations
potential. Capabilities introduced by Dr. Lambertsen also
included use of the British submersible canoe Sleeping
Beauty, which would lead to decades of UDT and SEAL team
combatant submersible refinement, organization of the U.S.
Navy SEAL delivery vehicle teams, and modification of U.S.
Navy nuclear submarines for dedicated support of SEALs.
Indeed, his expertise in all areas of underwater operations
placed him at the forefront of this rapidly developing field.
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C H RI S T IA N J . LA M B ER T S E N 153
In 1952, Dr. Lambertsen and a colleague wrote a paper for the
National Academy of Sciences describing his “Self-Contained
Underwater Breathing Apparatus,” which resulted in the
acronym SCUBA.
From 1952 to 1960, Dr. Lambertsen served as a distinguished
member of the Office of Naval Research’s Cooperative
Underwater Swimmer Project and on the National Research
Council Committee on Amphibious Operations Panel on
Underwater Swimmers. He also served as member of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense Advisory Panel on Medical
Science, as a member of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board, as a consultant to the U.S. Army Chemical Corps,
and as chairman of the National Research Council Panel on
Shipboard and Submarine Medicine. His work with the federal
government continued through the 1990s, with service on the
U.S. Navy’s Oceanographic Advisory Committee and as a
member of the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Medical
Advisory Board for the Advanced SEAL Delivery System.
Dr. Lambertsen’s medical research expanded to the earliest
days of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s
(NASA) manned space program, where he actively participated
in advancing man’s capability for space exploration. In 1960 he
served as a member of the Space Sciences Board of the National
Academy of Sciences and as chairman of the Committee on
Man-in-Space, providing oversight to eight subordinate panels
covering a variety of disciplines.
From 1960 to 1967 he was chairman of the Life Systems
Advisory Board for the Mercury and Gemini projects.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he remained actively
engaged in scientific research surrounding man’s ability to
handle the environmental stresses of space. He was a member
of the President’s Space Panel from 1967 to 1970 and from
1983 to 1986 served as chairman of the Environmental Science
Review Committee as a member of NASA’s Space Medicine
Panel on the Lunar Base Planning Group. Dr. Lambertsen’s
work with NASA continued into the 1990s with participation
in a Radiation and Environmental Health Working Group,
Life Sciences Division Environmental Biomedical Sciences
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154 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Working Group, and Hubble Telescope Repair Project. From
1998 to 2000 he served as chairman of NASA’s Advisory
Committee on the International Space Station Decompression
Risk Definition and Contingency Plan.
Dr. Lambertsen’s impact on science and the military
earned him numerous honors, including the Alumni Award
of Merit from the University of Pennsylvania and in 1989 the
Distinguished Graduate Award from the Perelman School of
Medicine—the highest honor bestowed on alumni. He was also
presented the Legion of Merit Award and the Distinguished
Public Service Medal in 1972, the highest award bestowed on
a civilian by the U.S. Department of Defense; the U.S. Coast
Guard’s Distinguished Public Service Award in 1976; the U.S.
Army Special Forces Green Beret Award in 1996; the national
UDT-SEAL Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999;
and the U.S. Special Operations Command Medal in 2001. He
was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1977.
He also received the New York Academy of Sciences Award
for Research in Environmental Sciences, the Pioneer Award of
the Navy Historical Society, and in 2010 the John Scott Award
from the Philadelphia Board of Directors of City Trusts, which
previously honored Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Jonas
Salk. In May 2011 the U.S. Special Operations Command
honored him with establishment of the “Dr. Christian J.
Lambertsen Award for Operational Innovation,” which will
be presented annually.
Dr. Lambertsen’s most significant and crowning achieve-
ments undoubtedly came in 1967 and 1968, when he served
as founding president of the Undersea Medical Society (now
Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society) and established
the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Environmental
Medicine and its companion Environmental Biomedical
Stress Data Center, where researchers continue to explore the
pathophysiology of oxygen toxicity, diving-related diseases,
and mechanisms of hypoxic response. His service to our
country as a combat veteran, an educator, a medical doctor,
an inventor, and a distinguished citizen represents a lifetime
of achievement. His impacts on diving physiology, undersea
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C H RI S T IA N J . LA M B ER T S E N 155
and hyperbaric research and medical treatments, hydrospace
sciences, biomedical sciences, and environmental sciences
were without equal.
Dr. Lambertsen is survived by his sons Christian Jr., David,
Richard, and Bradley and by six grandchildren. His wife of
more than 40 years, Naomi Hill Lambertsen, died in 1985.
His son, Christian, remembers his father as being dedicated
to his family, immediate and extended, and that he was an
adventuresome sailor. As an environmentalist, he was active in
land preservation along the shores of his farm, called Lostock,
near St. Michaels, Maryland.
