George S. Sperti; Cancer Researcher and Inventor
COVINGTON, Ky. — George Speri Sperti, a cancer researcher and versatile inventor whose creations ranged from arthritis relief medications to Preparation H, has died.
Sperti, who was 91, died Monday at a hospital here. He had suffered an aneurysm.
Sperti, who also contributed to scientific journals on topics as diverse as biology and gerontology, discovered a way to enhance vitamin D in milk, formulated Aspercreme for arthritis relief, developed a meat tenderizer, came up with a method for freeze-drying orange juice concentrate and created the popular hemorrhoid treatment Preparation H.
He and the institute he directed held more than 120 patents.
Sperti received numerous honorary degrees and was decorated by popes and foreign countries. He was a member of several international scientific organizations.
As a 21-year-old student at the University of Cincinnati under a cooperative arrangement with the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co., he developed the first accurate meter of large amounts of electrical current, using materials from his mother’s kitchen. That earned him $30,000.
A few years later, as a professor at his alma mater, Sperti developed a process for irradiating starches and milk foods with ultraviolet light. General Foods Corp. bought the process for $300,000, which Sperti turned over to the university.
He was co-founder of the university’s basic science laboratory, but left the lab in 1935 at the request of Archbishop John McNicholas of Cincinnati.
McNicholas had asked Sperti to start a scientific school of graduate studies that could keep pace with what the archbishop feared would be communism’s emerging use of science as a political tool.
The Institutum Divi Thomae, named for Thomas Aquinas and later renamed the St. Thomas Institute, concentrated on cancer research, but also explored basic life processes. It closed in 1987 because Sperti retired and because of declining patent royalties.
Royalties from Sperti’s medical discoveries, from his sunlamp company and other spinoffs of his inventions, supported the institute and paid students’ tuition.
Sperti never married. His sister, Mildred, was his constant companion and co-worker until her death in 1987.
