Albert Stevens

1887 – 1966

Albert Stevens, identified in declassified records as patient CAL-1, was an American house painter from Ohio who in 1945 was injected with plutonium without his knowledge or consent at the University of California Hospital, San Francisco, as part of secret U.S. government human radiation experiments. Erroneously diagnosed as terminally ill, he survived another 21 years carrying the highest known accumulated radiation dose ever absorbed by a human, dying of natural heart disease in 1966. His case became one of the central exposures of the broader Manhattan Project–era radiation experiments documented by the 1995 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM