We are happy to announce that a new collection, the William H. Briner Papers, is now available and open for research.
Captain William Harold Briner was a pharmacist who began his career in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in 1954 and later went on to establish one of the first nuclear pharmacies in the country.
Early in his career, Briner worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland in several different capacities at the U.S. Pharmacy Service. Starting as a resident, Briner eventually became Acting Chief and then Chief of different services within the Clinical Center. While Chief of the newly-created Radiopharmaceutical Service Clinical Center, Briner received an award for his accomplishments in the field. The photo to the right shows him at this event.
After retiring from the Public Health Service, Briner went on to teach and conduct research at both UNC and Duke. Some of his first research was on a collaborative project with North Carolina State University about preparing radioactive fluorine-18 for medical use. His research focused on establishing protocol to use fluorine-18 for superior bone scanning in patients. His 
notes on this subject are fascinating and contain interesting details like radioactive tags, as seen to the left.
This project was just one of many in which Briner would be involved throughout his time at Duke. His arrival at the Medical Center was much anticipated and there are several clippings announcing his faculty appointment and summarizing Dr. Briner’s accomplishments and biography.
He retired from Duke as a widely-published, highly-regarded figure in the field of nuclear medicine, with several prominent positions, articles, and accolades by the end of his teaching career.
To learn more abou the William H. Briner Papers, please see the collection finding aid.
This blog post was contributed by Archives Intern Astrid Cook-Dail.