Jay M. Gould

Who is Jay M. Gould?

Jay Martin Gould, who died in September 2005, was a statistician and epidemiologist who cofounded the Radiation and Public Health Project in 1989. It was Dr. Gould's contention that radiation from nuclear power plants was causing high rates of cancer in surrounding neighborhoods. For more than two decades, Dr. Gould routinely warned that low levels of radiation from nuclear reactors were far more dangerous than commonly believed. But his research was criticized by many in the scientific community as being alarmist.

In 1996, Gould published the book The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors.

Dr. Gould was born in Chicago in 1915 and raised in New York. He earned his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College and his doctorate from Columbia University. He was originally an economist before becoming interested in radiation.