Rustem Igor Gamow (November 4, 1935 – April 15, 2021)[1] was amicrobiology professor at theUniversity of Colorado andinventor. His best known inventions included theGamow bag and the Shallow Underwater Breathing Apparatus. He was fired from CU in 2004 following sexual harassment and assault charges.[2]
Gamow was born in theGeorgetown section ofWashington, D.C., the son of physicistsGeorge Gamow and Lyubov Vokhmintseva "Rho" Gamow, both emigrants from theSoviet Union. He finished high school at age 17, and then joined the National Ballet Company.[citation needed] He workedbreaking horses, delivering packages by motorcycle, and teachingkarate before enrolling at theUniversity of Colorado in 1958, where his father taught.[citation needed] Igor Gamow received a B.A. and M.S. inbiology, and a Ph.D. inbiophysics, all at University of Colorado.[citation needed]
Gamow worked onPhycomyces blakesleeanus duringpostdoctoral research underMax Delbrück atCaltech. At CU-Boulder, he didPhycomyces research for over twenty years, mainly on the avoidance and anemotropic responses, helical growth, and cell-wall mechanical properties. He also studied the infrared-detectors of theBoa constrictor.
An avid outdoorsman, Gamow developed a number of inventions for safety in outdoor activities. His first important one, patented in 1990, was theGamow bag enabling mountain climbers to avoidaltitude sickness by raising the surrounding pressure.Sir Edmund Hillary, the first expedition leader to summitMount Everest, wrote him in congratulation.[citation needed] Another was the Shallow Underwater Breathing Apparatus ("SUBA"), a pressurizedsnorkel system permitting swimmers to breathe easily as deep as ten feet under water.
Gamow also worked inbionics, on anorthopedic knee brace that stores energy within a spring from thehamstring and redirects it to thequadriceps.[citation needed]
In 2002, a former assistant of Gamow, filed a lawsuit against theUniversity of Colorado in which it alleged sexual harassment and sexual assault of seven women. After the lawsuit was filed, the university began to take steps to terminate Gamow. In 2004, the CU Board of Regents unanimously upheld the recommendation to dismiss Gamow for "moral turpitude". Gamow filed a lawsuit against CU in an attempt to be reinstated.[2]
In May 2006, the university lost a lawsuit that had been filed by Gamow's former assistant and was ordered to pay her $285,000 plus attorney's fees.[citation needed]
In September 2011, Gamow released an open letter addressing some misconceptions about events leading to his termination from the University of Colorado.[3]
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