Sheldon Wolff (September 22, 1928,[1] Peabody, Massachusetts – May 24, 2008, Mill Valley, California) was an American radiobiologist, cytogeneticist, and environmental health expert on mutagenic chemicals.
[4] His doctoral dissertation "Some aspects of the chemical protection against radiation damage to Vicia faba chromosomes" was supervised by Karl Sax.
[6] Dr. Wolff was widely honored for his discovery that the body's genetic machinery possessed natural mechanisms for repairing cell damage caused by exposure to extremely low levels of radiation.
Those "repaired" cells, he found, then showed less damage after exposure to higher levels of radiation, and also to chemicals that ordinarily cause genetic mutations.
In 1998, he and the organization he served in Hiroshima received the first Leonard Sagan "BELLE" award for their work studying the biological effects of low-level exposure to radiation.