Dr. Morton Lippmann Scholarship

Dr. Lippman served on the faculty of NYUSOM for over 50 years and was truly a giant in the field of environmental and occupational health; a field in which he had a long and storied career.  His work on the adverse effects on human health of inhaled particles and gases in adults and children has had a significant and lasting impact on human health and our society.  Dr. Lippman is a former Director of Environmental Medicine’s Human Exposure and Health program and of the Division’s NIEHS T32 Training Grant in Environmental Health.   

Dr. Lippmann’s association with NYUSOM extends back to his undergraduate years in the 1950’s, when he did a summer research program in the laboratory of Professor Sidney Laskin, a mentor who encouraged him to apply to the PhD degree program at NYU.  After first earning a Master of Science (SM) degree in the Graduate School of Arts and Science at Harvard, he worked for the U.S. Public Health Service Occupational Health Program, and then at the New York City laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission.  He then entered the NYU Graduate School of Engineering and Science under the guidance of Dr. Roy Albert in the Department of Environmental Medicine.  His thesis work was the beginning of Dr. Lippmann’s contributions to environmental health policies.  His publication on the regional deposition of particles in the respiratory tract, and his subsequent research findings served, for nearly half a century as the primary basis for the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of thoracic particulate matter (PM10) and a major basis for EPA’s later sampling criteria for fine particles in ambient air (PM2.5).  After defending his PhD thesis in 1967, Dr. Norton Nelson, then Chair of the newly established NYU Institute of Environmental Medicine, offered him a position as an Assistant Professor. 

Dr. Lippmann contributed to both academic and research programs in NYUSOM’s Department of Environmental Medicine.  He developed and taught a course in Environmental Health Science and, as there was no textbook for such a course, he wrote one together with Drs. Richard Schlesinger and Beverly Cohen.  In addition to his contributions to teaching and mentoring, Dr. Lippman made major contributions to air pollution research with federal funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the Health Effects Institute.  The latter two funding sources supported Dr. Lippman as Director of a decade long research program examining the short- and long-term health effects of airborne particles.  Over his career, he authored or edited numerous books and book chapters and published over 360 scientific papers. 

In addition to Dr. Lippmann’s distinguished career at NYUSOM, he provided significant service contributions to policy and regulation committees both nationally and globally.  For 30 years, Dr. Lippman served as a contributor, member, and Chair of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC). This committee was established by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1980 and was charged with reviewing research and EPA documents dealing with the regulation of ambient air quality to support National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).  He later served as Chair of the EPA Science Advisory Board subcommittee that developed the dose/response relationship between the reduction of air pollution and resulting health benefits which was used for the first economic analyses and, which clearly demonstrated that the monetary savings in health costs greatly outweighed the financial burden of air pollution control. 

Lippmann received numerous awards and accolades, including AIHA's Donald E. Cummings Memorial Award, AIHA Fellow, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists’ Herbert E. Stokinger and Meritorious Achievement Awards, the Academy of Industrial Hygiene’s Henry F. Smyth Jr. Award, and the American Association for Aerosol Research’s David Sinclair Award.

For the faculty and students in the Department (and now Division) of Environmental Health, working alongside Mort over the years was both an honor and a privilege. His guidance was instrumental in launching dozens of careers.  His influence will remain with us always. Mort’s generosity of spirit, wit, and wisdom touched all who had the good fortune to know him, and his absence will be deeply felt.  Dr. Lippmann is survived by his loving wife Janet, his children Amy, David, and Stanley, and his granddaughter Kara.

The Birkners endowed this scholarship in Lippmann’s name as a tribute to the professor for being an influential force in the careers of both Larry and his brother, Jeff Birkner.