Walter Sartory
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Walter Kenneth Sartory (May 17, 1935 - February 22, 2009) was an American mathematician and nuclear scientist. He was born May 17, 1935, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[1] Little is known of his parents or his early life.[1] He told friends that his father was a house painter, but never mentioned his mother.[1] He had at least one sister, but as adults, they began feuding and severed contact with each other.[1] He was reportedly a member of the Boy Scouts of America and had an early interest in rockets.[1]
Sartory earned a PhD in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1962.[1] After graduation, he began work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).[1] While most of his work at ORNL is currently classified by the U.S. government, former colleagues confirmed that much of it involved biological centrifuges, and he co-holds two U.S. patentsrelated to "a continuous-flow blood centrifuge used to separate white and red blood cells from plasma".[1] He also published pioneering papers on medical centrifuges and reactor designs.[2]
In 1977, Sartory received an IR-100 Award – presented by R&D Magazine (then Industrial Research) to recognize the 100 most significant products developed each year – for technological achievement for his work on the "Cytriage", an "automated three-stage centrifugal leukapheresis system".[3][4][5] The Cytriage was the first automatically-controlled device for harvesting donor granulocytes for transfusion into leukemia patients.[5] The device separated granulocytes from blood more efficiently, reducing the amount of time donors spent connected to the device, while yielding enough cells to be effective for treatments.[5]
In 1983, Sartory opened an account with Fidelity Investments, investing nearly all of his money.[6] Using algorithms to guide his buy and hold investment strategy, he built a portfolio that reportedly reached a value of $14 million before the Great Recession.[2][6] By November 2008, the value had reportedly plummetted to $2 million.[6]
For much of his life, Sartory received treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.[2] After retiring from ORNL in 1992, he became a recluse in his small apartment.[2] In March 2008, medication and therapy had lessened Sartory's reclusiveness, and he moved to Hebron, Kentucky, to be closer to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, which facilitated his travel to conferences held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Center for Inquiry.[1][2]
Sartory was murdered by Willa Blanc, his cleaning lady, on February 22, 2009. [7] Blanc was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]
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