Gordon Isaacs, the first patient treated with the linear accelerator (radiation therapy) for retinoblastoma in 1957. Gordon's right eye was removed January 11, 1957 because the cancer had spread. His left eye, however, had only a localized tumor that prompted Henry Kaplan to try to treat it with the electron beam. Gordon is now living in the East Bay, and his vision in the left eye is normal. Henry Seymour Kaplan (April 24, 1918 - February 4, 1984) was an American radiologist. He earned his degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago, after which he trained at the University of Minnesota, Yale University and the National Cancer Institute. Together with Edward Ginzton, he invented the first medical linear accelerator in the Western hemisphere while he worked at the Stanford University Medical Center. His main focus was on Hodgkin's disease, which was fatal before radiation therapy was used. In 1969, he became the first physician credited with the Atoms for Peace Prize. He was the first radiologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972. He died in 1984 at the age of 65 after a five month battle against lung cancer. Stanford University photograph, 1957.