BUCKY, GUSTAV

BUCKY, GUSTAV (1880–1963), radiologist. Born in Leipzig, from 1918 to 1923 he was head of the department of roentgenotherapy of the Berlin University clinic. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1923 but returned to Berlin in 1930 to serve as director of the radiological department and cancer institute of the Rudolph Virchow Hospital. In 1933 he left Germany and served as head of the department of physiotherapy at Sea View Hospital in New York City, consulting physiotherapist at Bet David Hospital, and as clinical professor of radiology at Bellevue Hospital, N.Y. Bucky is known as the inventor of the Bucky diaphragm for roentgenography, which prevents secondary rays from reaching the film, thereby securing better definition. He also invented a camera for medical color photography in radiography and was the originator of grenz ray therapy (infra roentgen rays) called Bucky rays. He wrote numerous scientific articles on his subject and was the author of Die Roent genstrahlen und ihre Anwendung (1918); Anleitung zur Diathermiebehandlung (1921) and Grenzstrahltherapie (1928). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S.R. Kagan, Jewish Medicine (1952), 539. (Suessmann Muntner)