from norman jefferis “jeff ” holter a serendipitous life: an essay in

Drumlummon Views—Fall 2008 224

from Norman Jefferis “Jeff ” HolterA Serendipitous Life: An Essay in Biography

Rick Newby

IntroductionProbing the Unknown

A miracle is happening to youAnd you are annoyed.

A miracle is happening to meAnd I am keen with delight.

from “Trio,” Beyond the Mores: Poems of Frieda Fligelman (Berkeley: Athe Press, 1965)

Legend has it that there were three princes of Serendip, whatever that is or was, and that they set out in the world to see specific places and find specific things. They did not get to these places or find these things but got to other places and found other things. Hence the word “serendipity,” which plays such a part in probing the unknown.

Norman J. Holter, “The Genesis of Biotelemetry,” Biotelemetry (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1976)

At the southeast corner of Women’s Park in the heart of Helena, Montana’s capital city, stands a grand granite arch (rescued from an apartment block destroyed by fire). Affixed to the left side of the arch is a bronze plaque that reads, “In Loving Memory of Norman Jefferis Holter, 1914–1983, and His Many Contributions to Science, Medicine, Business, Community, the Arts, and Learning.” Inscribed at the bottom of the plaque (donated by Joan Treacy Holter, the honoree’s widow) is the phrase: “The one thing no one can take from you is what you know.” Holter himself had given the arch to the city in 1982, just

Norman Jefferis “Jeff ” Holter at home, ca. 1978. Gene Fischer, photographer. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 5 Folder 4)


Jeff Holter at work in the Holter Research Foundation laboratory, Helena, Montana, no date. Photographer un-known. Collection of Joan Treacy Holter.


before his death, in memory of his parents, Norman B. and Florence J. Holter, and his paternal grandmother and grandfather, Mary P. and Anton M. Holter, “Pioneers and Builders of Montana and of Helena.”

Although he was certainly a local hero and an internationally renowned scientist, neither Norman Jefferis “Jeff ” Holter—nor the global impact of his scientific contributions—have been fully appreciated beyond a small circle of physicians and researchers. This essay seeks to correct that oversight, attempting to shed light on both the character of this singular man and his important work. At the same time, it makes no claims to be a full biography. Rather, it focuses almost exclusively on Jeff Holter’s scientific achievements. It gives short shrift to Holter’s family and social life and his myriad interests outside the sciences (except as those came into contact with, or had an impact upon, his life as a research scientist).

Trained as both a chemist and physicist, Holter—who spent his life shuttling between Helena, Montana, and La Jolla, California—was a man of the world, passionate about ideas and the arts (especially sculpture, jazz, and photography), infinitely curious, and dedicated to making a difference in the lives of his fellow humans. The scion of a remarkable Montana pioneer dynasty, he believed in the virtues of education, hard work, and intellectual independence, and because he had the means, he was able to establish a private foundation

and laboratory where he could follow his insights, guesses, and accidental discoveries at will. It has been said that the greatest scientists—those who make the great discoveries—are very like artists, operating as much by intuition as by logic. Jeff Holter was an articulate proponent of what he called “non-goal-directed scientific research,”1 and with his contributions to the field of what is today called “noninvasive electrocardiology” and his invention of the Holter Heart Monitor (and related technologies), he proved that just such an approach can be mightily effective.

Put simply, the highly portable Holter Heart Monitor (today the size of the smallest iPod) allows a physician to record the heart rhythms of a subject over many hours, while the patient engages in his or her daily routine. The physician can then quickly review the collected data, determining what the patient’s heart reveals over, for example, a twenty-four-hour period. Before the Holter Heart Monitor, the only heart information available was that collected in a matter of minutes while the patient was stationary. In describing his insight that such a monitor—which collected heart data over the long term—was desperately needed, Jeff Holter compared the recording of the heart to the assaying of ore (an apt comparison, given his family’s long connections with the gold and silver mining camps of Montana). He told an interviewer:


If I owned all of Mount Helena [the mountain, now a city park, that overlooks Helena’s historic West Side], and I picked up a rock at the bottom of it and sent it to a chemical analysis laboratory, and I said, “Please analyze this rock,” and they said, “Well that’s 37 percent zinc, 11 percent lead . . .,” then I would conclude that all of Mount Helena consisted of the same amount. That’s what’s called poor sampling, in any kind of science. . . . The idea that I should conclude that that mountain has those percentages of minerals is absurd. But that’s exactly what you do when you take an electrocardiogram in the office. You take twelve to fourteen heartbeats. But in the meantime, the heart beats 120,000 times a day. So you look at twelve of them, and you say, “Oh, you’re very healthy,” . . . Or, “You’re a very unhealthy man. No smoking, please.”

He went on to add:

[S]ince when does life consist of holding your breath and lying down and not moving a muscle? What about people on skis? Skydivers? People falling down stairs? People having three meals, one right on top of the

other? Or getting drunk as a skunk? Or being hit in the butt by an automobile? None of that is measured when you’re lying down. . . . 2

Undeniably, the Holter Heart Monitor, developed by Holter and his team at the Holter Research Foundation in Helena (beginning in 1947), has saved countless lives and helped launch a whole new field of medicine. As William C. Roberts, editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Cardiology, wrote soon after Holter’s death in 1983, “nearly 7,000 articles have been published on Holter monitoring . . . and 1 medical journal (Biotelemetry and Patient Monitoring) was started purely for publications on the subject.” Roberts added, “Not a bad accomplishment for a man who had neither an MD nor a PhD degree, who funded his own research, began his own laboratory located in a former train station in a town with a population of less than 30,000, and unassociated with a medical center and indeed located far away from any medical research center.” 3

In 1984, Holter’s discovery received further validation when a group of physicians and research scientists formed the International Society for Holter and Noninvasive Electrocardiology (ISHNE). They created ISHNE to “promote and advance the science of noninvasive electrocardiology in all its phases and to encourage the continuing education of physicians, scientists and the general public in the science of Holter


and Noninvasive Electrocardiology.”4 ISHNE’s journal is called Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology.

As a physicist, Jeff Holter served on the Navy teams that conducted atomic bomb tests at Bikini

Atoll and hydrogen bomb tests at Eniwetok Atoll immediately after the Second World War. He was among the earliest scientists to see the therapeutic possibilities of radioactivity, and he is still remembered for his pivotal role in the formation of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM). C. Craig Harris noted in a 1996 history of the Society, “The Society of Nuclear Medicine was created and constructed by persons from many branches of medicine and the physical sciences, but it originated mostly in the mind of a chemist-physicist-engineer named Norman ‘Jeff ’ Holter.” Holter and a handful of colleagues launched

the Pacific Northwest Society of Nuclear Medicine in 1954, only fifty-seven years after Marie Curie named the mysterious rays emanating from uranium “radioactivity” and only eighteen years after John H. Lawrence made the first clinical therapeutic application of radiation when he used phosphorus-32 to treat leukemia. Holter served as the president of the national Society from its founding in 1956 until 1967. The Society remains vigorous into the twenty-first century, and as Harris

Jeff Holter on board on a U.S. Navy ship during his service as a physicist in World War II. Photographer unknown. Cour-tesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 5 Folder 12).


concluded in his history of SNM, “[ Jeff Holter] was a clever innovator; his name is known to thousands of cardiologists and their patients from the Holter Monitor, which he invented. He also invented the Society of Nuclear Medicine.”5

Nearly all the commentators on Jeff Holter’s career marvel at his ability to have had such a major impact on the scientific community—from his home in the wilds of Montana. However, Joan, the scientist’s widow, speculates that, because of his relative isolation (and therefore relative freedom), Holter accomplished a great deal more than he might have in an academic or governmental setting on either coast. Holter did suffer from his isolation, but when he found himself in academia (in 1964, he accepted a full professorship as a “Specialist in Physics” in the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, San Diego), he quickly found that it was not to his liking. Instead, he favored an environment where he was free of rigid thinking, arbitrary boundaries, and jealous colleagues.

Jeff Holter was a gregarious man who refused to be bounded by social distinctions, and he was frankly uncomfortable with his fame. At the end of his life, he told historian Bill Lang:

I get a funny little feeling when I get very far out of Helena, and doctors begin to ask me

for my autograph. I say, “What the hell? I’m not a movie star.” . . . I never went to Famous School, so I give an autograph and then say, “Let’s go have a drink or something.” . . . I just have been doing what gives me a great deal of pleasure. And that’s to search out the unknown.6

* * * * * * *

The life of Jeff Holter might well serve as instructive in a time (the early twenty-first century) when science education grows ever more important within an increasingly global economy. In a United States House hearing in 2006, Dr. Joseph Heppert, chair of the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Education, testified that his daughter, an aspiring scientist, “will no longer be competing with her fellow American students for an ‘American’ job [in the life sciences]. She will be competing with all of the outstanding students in her field on the planet for the best, most rewarding high-tech jobs—jobs that know no national or geographic boundaries. In such an environment, she and other students of her generation need to be well prepared.”7

At the same time, Heppert pointed out, there are signs that American pre-college science education is “desperately struggling.” These troubling indicators include “unsatisfactorily low student scores on


international tests of science knowledge, declining student interest in science careers, and many high school graduates who do not have sufficient preparation to choose scientific and technical career pathways.”8

A 2005 article in the New York Times, “Not Invented Here: Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?” by Timothy L. O’Brien, underscores the sense that Jeff Holter can be seen as an important figure in American science, not only because of his laboratory’s discoveries, but also because he stands as an exemplar of an independent researcher whose approach resembles that of an artist as much as it does that of a traditional scientist.

O’Brien notes, “Inventors [and he includes research scientists in this category] have always held a special place in American history and business lore, embodying innovation and economic progress in a country that has long prized individual creativity and the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers and researchers have given society microchips, personal computers, fiber optics, e-mail systems, hearing aids, air bags and automated teller machines, among other devices.”9 Certainly the Holter Heart Monitor belongs on such a list.

It is O’Brien’s emphasis on independent researchers, however, that speaks most powerfully to Holter’s accomplishment. O’Brien quotes Ilene Busch-Vishniac, a professor at Johns Hopkins University

(who might almost be quoting Holter’s thoughts on serendipity and being open to accidents), “For an inventor to be successful they have to think outside the box and propose things that are wildly different.” O’Brien then quotes innovation consultant Peter Arnell on the importance of independent research, “When inventors work independently, the accident itself is seen as an opportunity, whereas in the corporate world accidents are seen as failures. When people exist outside of the corporate model and have vision and passion, then accidents and getting lost are beautiful things.”10

Sadly, O’Brien reports, the U.S. is on the verge of losing its advantage in the field of innovation. He writes, “[P}rivate and public capital [i]s not being adequately funneled to the kinds of projects and people that foster invention. The study of science is not valued in enough homes . . . and science education in grade school and high school is sorely lacking.”11

Jeff Holter’s story can offer a powerful corrective at this juncture when the United States stands on the verge of losing that distinctly American mix of inventiveness, independent thinking, and pleasure in discovery—and perhaps his example will inspire a few young scientists to follow a more independent path, helping to keep alive that grand American tradition of genuine innovation, a tradition that includes Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, as well as thousands of less well-known inventors who dared to break the


rules. As a report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Program for Inventors asserts, “Indeed, invention itself can be perceived as an act of rebellion against the status quo.” 12 Jeff Holter certainly possessed a profoundly restless curiosity and the will, the skill, and the means to follow his intuitions. This brilliant, intrepid, compassionate, and witty man deserves our gratitude—and much greater exposure, well beyond the limited spheres of the medical community and highly specialized journals.

Cardiologist Harold L. Kennedy concurs, writing in his 2006 essay, “The History, Science, and Innovation of Holter Technology”:

It is memorable to have known personally the modest lifestyle that Jeff Holter lived, and his continuing struggle that he endured to pursue his scientific endeavors in Helena, Montana. . . .

Every form of electrocardiographic information of humans who go about their daily activities and is protracted over a long duration of time “without touching” (i.e. without cables) is an evolution of Jeff Holter’s earlier paradigm and contributions. Norman Jefferis Holter should be widely regarded and accepted as the “Father of Ambulatory and Long-Term Electrocardiography,” lest we

Bill Glasscock, Jeff Holter’s chief collaborator at the Holter Research Foundation, tests a Holter Heart Monitor on the streets of Helena, no date. Photographer unknown. Collection of Joan Treacy Holter.


ignore and fail to recognize the clear footstep of a giant [who] lived within our own time.13

In a tribute to Holter in The American Journal of Cardiology, the authors—in thanking him for his “monumental contribution”—quoted the Montana scientist approvingly. Holter, they wrote, “remarked near the end: ‘Through training and observation, I have learned that honesty and integrity are not just cliches but sources of both self respect and enlightened self interest.’” The authors concluded, “[ Jeff Holter] lived by those words.”14

Chapter OneBeginnings

Jeff Holter was born in 1914 in the family home in Helena, directly across the street from the house where he would spend much of his adult life. The physician who delivered him was John Lear Treacy, the father of his future bride, Joan Treacy Holter. His paternal grandfather Anton M. Holter (1831–1921), a Norwegian immigrant, had come to the United States in 1854. As a writer for the Mountain States Monitor asserted in 1919, “[Anton Holter] came when civilization first struggled to gain a foothold on the frontier, and he proved himself a veritable pioneer by his constructive ability and indomitable energy.”15 A. M. Holter was one of Montana’s

greatest entrepreneurs, and it can be said that Jeff Holter inherited from his distinguished forbear—who was knighted by the King of Norway for his contributions to education—a predilection for quick thinking and “non-rigid” exploration (when one business enterprise failed to succeed, Anton quickly turned to another until he achieved success). Anton was known as the father of Montana’s lumbering industry (he started the first sawmill in the territory near Virginia City in 1863), and his many other business interests included Holter Hardware (which sold general hardware, mining supplies, and mining and milling machinery at both wholesale and retail), the Virginia City Water Company and other utility companies (including the United Missouri River Power Company, which built power-generation dams near Helena), and numerous mining operations in Montana, Idaho, and British Columbia.

Through necessity, Anton became, as his grandson would, a resourceful and skilled inventor. In his memoir, “Pioneer Lumbering in Montana,” Anton recalled that, in setting up that first sawmill,

. . . we soon encountered what seemed to be the worst obstacle yet. This was that we had no gearing for the log carriage, not even the track irons or pinion—and to devise some mechanism that would give the carriage the forward and reverse movement became the


paramount problem. After a great of thought and experimenting we finally succeeded in inventing a device which years later was patented and widely used under the name of “Rope Feed.” . . .

[I]n order to construct this, we had to first build a turning lathe, and when we came to turn iron shafting, it took much

experimenting, before we learned to temper the chisels so they would stand the cutting of iron. . . . We finally got the mill started and sawed about 5,000 feet of lumber before we ever had a beast of burden in the camp.16

By his own account, Jeff was deeply influenced by his grandfather. Although Anton lacked any formal

Anton M. Holter, the pioneer patriarch of the Montana Holter clan. From Progressive Men of Montana (Chica-go: A. W. Bowen & Company, ca. 1901).Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 942-820).

Mary P. Holter, Jeff Holter’s paternal grandmother, no date. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Histori-cal Society (PAC 942-831).


Anton and Mary Holter (far right) gather with their extended family at their Helena home, September 1905. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 942-838).


education (“[h]e was a carpenter”), he inculcated in his children and grandchildren the mantra, “You’ve got to work. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to be educated. You’ve got to work.” This family credo was seconded by Jeff ’s grandmother, Mary Pauline Holter, who came from “an educated Chicago family, some formal education. . . . my grandmother, when they got some kids, put her foot down and said, ‘Yale, Harvard. . . .’”17

Jeff ’s father, Norman Bernard Holter (educated at Columbia University as a mining engineer), and Norman’s brothers Aubrey L. and Edwin O. Holter, took over many of the businesses started by the energetic Anton and developed them further. Among these were the hardware company, the vast N-Bar Ranch in central Montana, the Holter Realty Company, and a closed-end investment company named the Holter Company, which invested in mining, oil, and California real estate. The brothers’ only sister, Clara, held stock in each of the family companies. But it was Norman B. who took primary responsibility for the family enterprises, and upon his father’s retirement, Jeff would inherit those responsibilities.

Jeff Holter came of age in a time when American science education was seriously deficient. In an interview at the end of his life, he recalled—with considerable chagrin—the failures of his science education in the Helena public schools (and a private high school in Philadelphia, where he spent

Jeff ’s father, Norman B. Holter, at a Holter Hardware Company picnic, June 1930. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 942-850).


his sophomore year). As a brilliant young chemist (he began his first experiments at age seven or eight and noted that “since the day I was born, I wanted desperately to be a chemist”), he was told that, as a freshman in high school, he was too young to study chemistry and that he’d have to wait—just like everyone else—until he was a senior, even though he had been “studying high school texts for the previous three or four years.”18

This short-sighted attitude maddened him, but he was fortunate in two regards: First, his family did not discourage him (“In fact, they didn’t encourage or discourage me. They just said, ‘Do whatever you want to do’”); one Christmas his parents’ gift of a chemistry set had launched his passion for that science. And second, early on, he found a mentor who actively encouraged his passion. The German-born Dr. Emil Starz, owner of the local Starz Pharmacy and a chemist in the Montana state veterinary laboratory, took young Jeff under his wing. At the end of his life, Holter fondly recounted his experiences in Starz’ lab:

Dr. Starz came over from Germany in the 1800s, a very highly educated man in chemistry. . . . there was no place for a Ph.D. in chemistry in Montana in the 1880s. . . So, he finally got a job—what was it?—in the state veterinarian laboratory, which I guess

The bookish young Jeff Holter, no date. Photographer un-known. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 4 Folder 12).


spent most of their time analyzing cows’ stomachs and what not. . . . during that era, I was carrying the Saturday Evening Post on Thursdays, paid three cents, sold them for a nickel. . . . And I would usually have a clear ten cents, twenty cents, one for the movie on Saturday afternoon . . . and the other to take the streetcar, out to Dr. Starz’ laboratory—which is where I got so much inspiration.19

Dr. Starz did more than encourage Holter; he took time out from his “pretty heavy schedule” to guide the high school student through experiments:

It was the state veterinarian’s chemical analysis laboratory, and it was just a nice, small, pretty well-equipped laboratory. And of course, the smells and everything else thrilled the hell out of me. . . . And he was a charming old gentleman—much maligned in the First World War by super-patriots—but he would sit me up in the corner and every once in a while . . . he’d come over and say, “Well, now you put ‘dis solution in dis’ solution and tell me ’vot happens.” He had a helluva heavy accent. So I’d put these two clear liquids together and I’d say, “Mein Gott! It turned green!” He says, “You figure it out.

Dr. Emil Starz., Jeff Holter’s first mentor in chemistry, Helena, 1938. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 945-085).


. . .” Those were probably the biggest thrills of my high school days, of everything.20

Holter spoke of Starz with considerable emotion, and it is clear that each man held the other in high esteem. After he departed Helena for higher education, Holter kept in touch with his mentor. Holter recalled:

[A]fter he had got old and retired, I went to his house on Ninth. Chemistry was advancing rapidly in those days, and I was a graduate student. And I would remember his taking his time . . . to see that I learned something. So I would bicycle out to his house with a little package, and we would sit there and I would ask him if he’d heard of the such-and-so reaction. Or the new developments in what’s-his-name. And he hadn’t, so I would lay out my package and give him a demonstration. . . . And he loved it. And I loved it. . . . [A]s I look back . . . those were the absolute highlights, the visits to his laboratory.

In 1927, when Jeff was thirteen, Starz sent the young chemist a gift. “My dear young friend,” he wrote, “Herewith I present you with a set of analytical weights, the same I used when I first entered College in 1884.

You may have use for it & if not I rather see you have it, than anyone else.”21

Starz would offer his protegé best wishes—in 1939, on the eve of Jeff ’s receipt of his master’s degree in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles—with some prescient words, “Knowing you will make a mark in your chosen profession & cognizant of the fact that science will hear from you in the years to come, I wish you the success & fortitude to master the final proof of your proficiency.”22 Though Jeff Holter would never receive the PhD Starz alluded to, the “final proof ” of his proficiency would come just as certainly, through his contributions to science at the Holter Research Laboratory.

Holter was always willing to go against the grain if doing so made good sense to him. This willingness to follow his own direction manifested itself in his experience as a Boy Scout. He recalled:

[M]y great claim to fame . . . is that I’m the only person with twenty-nine merit badges [who] never made Eagle Scout. . . . I thought I was doing fine and I got all these God-knows-what-kind-of merit badges, most of which were a breeze. Go down and rescue a flat iron from the bottom of the pool at the Y. . . . And go into the forest with a rusty razor blade and come out with a pan of biscuits. .


. . I got twenty-one merit badges and I said, “Hey, here I am! Please give me an Eagle.” And they said, more or less, “Up yours, you haven’t got one of the required merit badges, which is the athletic merit badge.” I said, “Athletics, smashletics; what the hell, I’ve got twenty-one merit badges. Give me my Eagle.” They said, “Rules are rules.” Just like the IRS.

Holter did try for his athletic merit badge, but throwing a baseball the necessary distance eluded him—he was “ten feet short” each time he tried. Finally he said, “‘Phooey on the Eagle Scouts. Who needs them?’ And I went on to other things.” 23

As he entered high school, Jeff worried that “some bully would beat me up because I liked chemistry,” but though the pressure to conform to the male norm in 1930s Montana must have been great, he remained committed to his passions. He was, for the most part, an honest and law-abiding young man (though hardly lacking in spirit). He admitted to, “back in our foolish years,” getting “a little tanked up on prohibition booze,” and he and some friends did steal a switch engine from the Northern Pacific depot. But, while his peers were shoplifting gum from the corner store, Holter “got my thrills out of making bombs. Set fire to my father’s house accidentally. . . .”24 This early

Jeff Holter as a teenager, undated. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 945-085).


predilection for pyrotechnics would extend throughout his life, from his time at the nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific to his sculpting of metal with dynamite to the family Fourth of July celebrations at their Colorado Gulch cabin, which always involved high explosives.

Jeff Holter’s curiosity and inventiveness could prove alarming to his parents. He recalled that his mother called up a friend and asked,

“[W]hat am I going to do with this naughty little boy? He’s always building things that scare me.” Which I did build, and it scared her, was a patented burglar alarm. . . . I had a little laboratory room in the cellar. . . And I had this [life-sized dummy] attached to the ceiling horizontally, hung by the head with a release mechanism on the feet so that, when you opened the door, this whole thing would come swinging right down and bat you in the face. And my poor, dear mother—I wish I could’ve apologized to her—she went down to see what’s going on in there and she opened the door and this monster came down and batted her right in the puss. And I said, “Well, that’s a poor way to treat your mother, but it’s a good burglar alarm.”25

Jeff ’s mother, Florence Jefferis, at the time of her high school graduation, San Rafael, California, May 1899. Bushnell, photographer. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 2 Folder 5).


Despite his high spirits and alarming initiatives, Jeff Holter cared deeply for his parents, and particularly for his mother, Florence, who suffered the severe chronic pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Because of Florence Holter’s condition, she and her son were often separated as he pursued a quality education and she traveled in search of relief from her suffering. In November 1927, when he was thirteen years old, Jeff wrote to his mother from the Benjamin Franklin Hotel (where he lived while attending the Episcopal Academy of Overbrook, Pennsylvania, a neighborhood of Philadelphia), “I am glad to hear that Dr. Pemberton seems to be helping. . . . I’m sorry you have to get so tired out and I suppose you would like to come home but as it seems to do you some good I hope you will stay.” As Christmas approached that year, Jeff wtote his mother, “It seems kind of empty like without you & Daddy to help wrap stuff up. I am sure that it will be better for you to have Christmas where you are. . . .” Clearly, during the winter of 1928−1929, the notion of home for Jeff Holter must have seemed a moving target.26

The following January he reported that he had just taken his final exams and that “I will make it fine.” He could also tout his five new merit badges—in Carpentry, Music, Chemistry, Personal Health, and Swimming—and that he had received his first class and star badges at a Boy Scout court of honor. But

foremost, he wrote, “I am glad to hear that you are getting much better and I hope you may come home soon and I suppose you do, too.”27 This solicitude for his wheelchair-bound mother, and desire to see her suffering cease, pervades his letters to her.

Perhaps his empathy for his mother’s pain had something to do with his later career. Despite his disclaimers—“I wasn’t into hearts; I was into curiosity”28—he was interested in more than pure research. With his passion for science and a highly developed capacity for compassion (like other children of the chronically ill), he was intent on making a real difference in the health and well-being of his fellow humans. As literary scholar Elaine Scarry has argued in The Body in Pain, the obverse of pain’s destructive nature is its ability to stimulate our capacity for imagining; it can lead not only to the “deconstruction of the world, but [also] to that world’s construction or reconstruction.”29

Back home in Helena, Jeff ’s private researches continued unabated in his basement laboratory, and he reported, “I’m coming along alright with my chemistry and am now making a lot of stuff.” At the moment (in March 1928), he was making a “Hectograph,” a primitive duplicating machine that uses special inks and gelatin to print text and images.30

As he progressed through high school, Jeff regularly reported his grades to his faraway parents


Florence Jefferis Holter (center), on a visit to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in search of relief from her rheuma-toid arthritis, April 1928. She is accompanied by her personal maid and nurse. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Soci-ety (Lot 3 Box 2 Folder 9).


(they generally wintered in Beverly Hills, again on behalf of his mother’s health). His marks revealed a pronounced talent (and predilection) for the sciences. In November 1929, he wrote that his final grades for the quarter were: “Algebra 86, English 92, Latin 87, French 87, Chemistry 97.” In algebra he “was the only one in the class of 21 that passed, I also had the highest chemistry and next to highest English grades.” He wrote further, “I made some glass in my furnace and some rayon (artificial silk). I am laboratory assistant at school and do all my experiments at home.”31

In January 1930, Jeff wrote to thank his parents for the “very pleasant surprise of your movie camera and projector.” He reported that Carl Hermann of Starz Pharmacy had “come up and showed several films including some in color.” He also noted that the “film starring Miss Marion Holter [ Jeff ’s older sister] and Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh has been shown a number of times” and that the young Holters had “sent in the first film of our own to be developed.” Later in the month, he expressed pleasure at being back in Montana. “Even with more to distract me here at home,” he wrote, “I find it easier to study than when I was cooped up in the hotel” in Philadelphia.

His parents continued to be supportive of his scientific interests. In the same letter, he noted, “I got your letters and the chemical stuff that Mother forwarded. . . . Thanks very much.”32

A scrapbook Holter must have kept during these years includes scores of clippings about discoveries by great scientists, not just by those who found practical applications for great discoveries (like Edison), but also purely theoretical discoveries, especially those of Albert Einstein and other physicists. Clearly, even as a boy, the nascent scientist was following the masters of innovation and implicitly modeling his own aspirations upon their accomplishments.

Mrs. Ellen Myers, who had helped care for Jeff ’s mother, wrote in 1940 (soon after Florence’s death) that “I miss her . . . but we must all go and cannot prevent it. She was afflicted so long.” Mrs. Myers added that Jeff “is one that will keep on trying and succeed too. His ambition when he had his works down basement was to ‘do something someday,’ and he sure has a good beginning.”33

Norman Jefferis Holter graduated from Helena High School in June 1931. His friend and mentor Emil Starz wrote him a congratulatory note:

You have . . . successfully fought the first round in the struggle for higher education and are now on the way to face the second one with an abundance of faith, ambition and energy. . . . “Per aspera ad astra” [“through adversity to the stars” or, as some would have it, “through suffering to renown”] was


Emil Starz at his home on Ninth Avenue, Helena, 1942. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (PAC 945-086).


always the battle cry of the Holters and they succeeded as history has proprerly recorded. With such a family record back of you you can not fail to add more honors and fame to the name of the Holters.34

* * * * * * *

With high school behind him, Jeff moved to southern California and enrolled first in Los Angeles Junior College and then the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received his A.B. in Chemistry in 1937. The summer of 1937 took him to Heidelberg, Germany, where he studied the German language in preparation for graduate school.

This journey into the heart of Germany just before the Second World War seems to have marked him profoundly. Despite the rise of Nazism, he found much to love about German culture, and in his spare time, he immersed himself in opera, the visual arts, architecture, and literature. Much of his later book collecting would focus on first editions of classic German scientific texts, like Goethe’s 1790 study of plant metamorphosis, Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklaren, and Albrecht Durer’s stunning work on the proportions of the human body, Hierin sind begriffen vier Bucher von menschlicher Proportion of 1528.

While in transit to and during his stay in

Germany, Jeff endeavored to keep friends and family informed about his adventures. On the outgoing voyage, on the Deutschland of the Hamburg-America Line (which advertised itself as the “fastest steamer in the world”), he wrote to his father that, in a few days of speaking with his fellow passengers, “I have picked up more German . . . than in many weeks of college study.” He found one elderly woman especially helpful. She “does not have a single word of English. She does not care to learn so the improvement is all on my side.” He also made the acquaintance of a “very intelligent and attractive girl from Carolina who is going to Europe to study medicine.” He added, “We have tried to speak German exclusively and have found that reading a German newspaper to each other is very good practice.”35

On the twenty-sixth of June, he reported, “Today we are seeing land for the first time,” and a day or two later, he announced, “We are entering the North Sea and the water is getting rougher. I feel quite the traveller, having spent a few minutes each in France & England.” His address in Heidelberg would be “Hirschgasse 20 Telefon 3737.”36

On June 30, he wrote his mother that he had arrived in Heidelberg the previous evening to an “excellent dinner.” He was pleased with his accommodations: “a room on the top floor of this very nice house owned by Dr. Fohnenbach (M.D.) and his


wife,” adding that “the view from my ‘study’ window”—which included a large castle directly across the Necker River—”is very beautiful.” His fellow boarders were an Englishman, a Swedish girl, his friend Harrison, another American student, and a German girl, and “German is spoken exclusively at the table.” “We are now waiting for lunch,” he concluded, “after which we will buy bicycles, haircuts, and rain coats. School starts tomorrow.”37

Holter family and friends gather on the front steps of the Norman J. Holter home, Helena, undated. Jeff is on the stairs at the upper right; his sister Marian sits on the wicker chair to the left. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Mon-tana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 4 Folder 1).


A few days later, Jeff wrote his mother that he had “just returned from the greatest chemical exposition in the world” in Frankfurt. “The exposition,” he wrote, “was beyond description and was so large I didn’t begin to see it in two solid days of walking

The students with whom Jeff Holter traveled to Heidelberg, Germany, June 1937. Jeff is in the back row, fifth from the left. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 5 Folder 6).


through massive halls filled with the latest in chemical science.” He was struck by the German effort to use chemistry to solve the “problem of lack of natural resources.” He elaborated: “Starting with wood only, thousands of products have been made to replace metal parts etc. Silk, flexible glass, plumbing fixtures, synthetic metals are only a few of the results.”38

Jeff Holter had reason to be impressed. As economist Doug Dowd has written:

Mention has been made of Germany’s large aims and limited resources. That it was nonetheless able to move forward rapidly and effectively into heavy industrialization was partially but importantly an outcome of its earlier checkerboard existence as hundreds of principalities and their associated bureaucracies. The serendipitous product was the most literate society in the world and the highest proportion of skilled craftspeople: a deep mine of talent that provided Germany with much of the “social capital” it needed to deal effectively with problems of organization, science, and technology. For Germany, more than others in its era, “necessity was the mother of invention.”

The successful fusing of science and technology was the source of Germany’s

ability to develop substitutes (“ersatz”) for resource deficiencies. The most important of these substitutes was coal tar derivatives, which not only made up for petroleum deficiencies, but also became the basis for Germany’s vanguard explosives industry.39

Of course, this fusing of science and technology (including the development of ersatz products), when joined with fascist ideology, resulted in catastrophe. It allowed Hitler’s Germany to build a war machine second to none and undertake its expansionist aggressions during the coming years of world war.

Meanwhile, Jeff found his schooling “very interesting.” He wrote, “The classes are composed of every nationality in Europe and only German can be spoken.” Because his course of study was the German language, he spent his day studying grammar, engaged in conversation for two straight hours with fellow class members, and listening to lectures in German “covering a wide range of subjects.” He was free to choose the lectures he audited and then choose “whatever final exam he [felt] prepared for.” In early July, he wasn’t yet sure “whether the lower courses are too easy or the upper courses too hard.”40

Jeff was developing a powerful interest in photography and was eager to purchase a fine German camera “to record my trip better,” finally settling on a


Zeiss Contax f/1.2 (which cost $425 in California and only $112 in Heidelberg). After asking his mother to send him sufficient Reichsmarks (5oo) to cover this expense, he wrote, “It is a gorgeous evening and I wish you could all see the beautiful Necker valley from this

porch with me. Every time I see it, I thank you and Father for this trip. Harrison wants to argue a little quantum theory, so see you later.”41

Jeff continued to find his German stay productive. “On the whole,” he reported, “there are many fewer diversions here and it is easier to study.” Back home, he noted, his family

always assumed that I could sit down and study automatically and mechanically . . . without being aware of the fact that many times I would much rather read an interesting biography or article in a non-technical field. In spite of my interest, it has been a struggle and a constant inner pep-talk to get my work done.42

He did admit to an occasional distraction even in Heidelberg, though the “novelty of speaking German [to German girls]. . . is now no more and I can’t dance to these brass bands”:

Sometimes I round a corner and run into a crowd of girls from Vassar or Smith touring the country. There is usually one or more who are attractive and miss Benny Goodman so I am late for dinner.43

Jeff Holter may have taken this photograph of a Nazi soldier with the Zeiss Contax camera he purchased during his Heidelberg stay, 1937. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 5 Folder 6).


At the end of July, he reported that he had “about exhausted the supply of things to see.” Most importantly, he and his friend Harrison had visited “every hospital and clinic within a radius of ten miles” of Heidelberg. At the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, a “very hospitable doctor-chemist-bacteriologist took me all through the laboratories and explained what work was in progress.” He was delighted to report that he was able to converse easily with the German scientist since “my technical vocabulary is necessarily more complete” because of his intensive language studies.44

In his effort to fully encounter the German language, he sought out literature labeled verboten by the Nazi regime:

I have had fun trying to locate a book of short stories by Thomas Mann who is decidely disowned by Germany. It seems like a speakeasy during prohibition to go in and whisper what you want. Several book handlers have taken me confidentially into the cellar and shown me the forbidden books which they neglected to burn. Others are quick to explain what a horrible menace Mann is to the welfare of Germany.45

On a day when his professor was ill, Jeff and his friend Harrison rode their bicycles (“we are both in

good condition”) out of town, hoping to “round up a symphony concert or two.” They cycled to Stuttgart, passing through innumerable smaller villages and towns and “never missed a side trip, seeing all the castles, museums and exhibitions of which the country side is full.” They covered more than two hundred kilometers in two days, returning by train “in time for school.” The trip, Jeff wrote, was “so full of interesting details that I couldn’t begin to remember them all.” His old camera was “too big to take along,” but he used Harrison’s smaller camera to take pictures of a “tremendous crash in Stuttgart between three street cars and a truck.” His sole disappointment was that they failed to acquire tickets to a concert by renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini.46

Immediately after the Stuttgart trip, Jeff bought the new camera, writing his father in a letter dated August 5:

Thanks again for the wherewithal for the camera. . . . [I] will be able to accurately record all the rest of my trip. This camera is especially made for scientific work as well as general photography and has many special applications not obtainable in any other camera. Very high speed pictures and pictures under poor light are possible.


He was glad, he wrote, to hear of his father’s “beer bust with Dr. Starz and the rest of your gang.” Such “relaxation,” he wrote, “does you good.”47

As summer ended, Jeff ’s thoughts turned to final exams and graduate school. The two exams included one on general aspects of German and the other on “technical German principally in the field of physical chemistry.” He felt unsure whether he would pass either exam but noted, “if I do pass, I will have completed one-half of the language requirement for the chemical doctorate.” He had been eager to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology—“one semester at M.I.T. will offer me more advantages than will CalTech”—but the Boston school had told him that “I am a little short on higher mathematics to enter the graduate school.” His father wanted him to attend a California university, but Jeff implored him, “Please let me be the judge of what school is best for my requirements.” The University of Wisconsin, he noted, “has come into consideration, and if I do go there I will be at least that much closer to home.” He remained hopeful that, with a little make-up math at UCLA “or wherever I go,” he could still attend M.I.T. As soon as he completed his exams, he and Harrison planned one last European journey, traveling through Zurich, Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and Hamburg and sailing on August 19 from Auxhaven.48

In a nearly twenty-page missive addressed “Dear People” (probably meant for his family), Jeff offered a

kind of journal of this final trip. Penned on Hamburg-America Line stationery, his account started on August 10, when he and Harrison set out for Switzerland, and ended August 24, when—liner-bound for New York—he contemplated the next steps in his young life. His account would be, he wrote, a “hodge podge of impressions patterned after [Walter] Winchell’s column or whatever style suits the purpose.”

Jeff found Zurich “quite the cosmopolitan city and it is not unusual to see a sign which is written in a mixture of languages.” He and Harrison enjoyed a Schubert concert on the shores of Lake Constance, and in a Swiss nightclub “where waiters were busy carrying around trays of pastry and ice cream instead of gin and seltzer water,” he visited with a German-speaking black jazz musician who had recently toured in the Soviet Union, where two of the members of his band had “spent three months in prison for discussing politics ‘out of school.’”

Jeff declared himself “not overly impressed with European culture.” He felt that there existed in Europe “about the same minority of people who are genuinely interested in something besides the movies and radio as there is in America.” He noticed that the visitors to the art museum in Zurich were mostly American and English, and the operas he attended “all over Germany seem to cater almost exclusively to the tourist trade—a sort of commercialized culture.” Only the “tourist filled


cafes” offered “good string music” instead of “cheap vaudeville,” and “the truly native places were much lower than our American ‘joints’ yet were patronized by what would correspond to our middle class.”

Meanwhile Jeff continued to happily consume European high culture, attending concerts, buying a

Rembrandt reproduction for his friend Hal Jenkin, and spending one entire day in Munich exploring the Deutsches Museum. Devoted to science and technology, the museum was the “largest in the world of its kind.” The exhibits held Jeff rapt:

A studious Jeff Holter in his room in Heidelberg, 1937. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Montana Historical Society (Lot 3 Box 5 Folder 6).


Everything was presented so that its complete evolution was seen. For example, one walks into an alchemical laboratory of 1200 and then into one typical of 1300, 1400 etc. up to the modern completely equipped laboratory. . . . The histories of music, sculpture, mathematics, art perspective and many other fields were objectively presented. I took some pictures of one of Bach’s pianos.

The next day he visited the famed Pinakothek art galleries, but for him the more important discovery was the Deutsches Museum library. This remarkable repository thrilled him with its “current issues of 1000 scientific monthly journals as well as bound volumes of all previous issues.” He lamented, “I only had time to walk around and see what was there—would like to spend a summer.”

During a long walk through the city, he was less than thrilled by the heavy military presence, and at the changing of the guard at a “tomb of some Nazis,” he found himself “caught in the midst of a bunch of goose stepping soldiers and marched through most of the ceremony with them.” He and Harrison also visited the impressive new “House of German Art,” which Hitler had had built to showcase “proper” contemporary art, as opposed to the “degenerate” modern variety denounced by the regime. Jeff found the exhibition

“most interesting,” but the “very quantity” of work made him “suspicious about some of the quality.”

At a concert of Richard Strauss’ comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, he found himself—“upholding the Holter tradition for coincidence”—standing next to an old friend, Carl Ross, “that good looking fellow that I ran around with at Junior College before he went off to Stanford.” Ross was “rounding . . . off ” his master’s degree with a European tour.

On August 16, Jeff and Harrison arrived in Berlin, where they “passed several groups of soldiers . . . practicing dragging cannons up and down hills.” He commented, too, on the heavy police presence. He had hoped to visit Dr. Starz’s relatives in Potsdam, but ran out of time; “I am sorry,” he wrote, “as I really wanted to say hello to them.”

On August 18, the two young men caught the “Flying Hamburger,” the famous streamlined train running between Berlin and Hamburg. The “Hamburger” maintained the “fastest schedule in the world” and averaged “about 100 miles an hour.” Early the next morning they boarded the ship bound for home. To the envy of his traveling companions, Jeff had “eight very nice letters” waiting for him, including one from Dr. Starz.

He soon found himself speaking English again and wondered whether “7 weeks in Germany would really affect one’s English,” observing that he often


caught himself “using German word order when I speak.” Many of his fellow passengers were seasick, but he seemed immune. He reveled in a return to “quite unGerman” breakfasts: “eggs, bacon, steak, potatoes, pancakes, mushrooms, cereal, fruit, and toasted rolls.”

On shipboard, he observed that his German stay had had a significant impact, by deepening—and bringing closer together—his twin passions for art and science. He wrote:

Hope I don’t seem too cold-blooded if I try to correlate two fields of interest by reading Mathematik und Malerei [“Mathematics and Painting”], a book which analyzes mathematically the more famous paintings of well known artists. . . . Go ahead and call me eccentric—I can enjoy a sunset in its full beauty by viewing it as a whole and then enjoy it a little more by knowing what makes it beautiful.

He looked forward to his time in graduate school:

This whole business of higher education demands some thought. I realize that it is a rather selfish interest which makes me want to continue in school, but I do think that everyone can share in the benefits. It means

three, four or more years of being seen only at meals or not at all if my betterance indicates periods of study away from home. The work will be of the most difficult and exacting kind. . . . I have never been able to know whether my actions are understood. . . . I know that intensive, specialized work will bring out remarks such as “one-track-mind,” etc. . . .

While he objected to this characterization, he concluded his letter by admitting,

I will have to shelf the things which I enjoyed this summer, with the knowledge that after I have a doctorate I can then sit back and enjoy music, literature and art. The other alternative would be to take time now to read all the books from the book-of-the-month club, take time now for enjoying the broadening interests which are a part of me, and remain forever mediocre as a scientist.

Thus resolute, he prepared to undertake this “most difficult and exacting” enterprise. Although he would not realize his dreams of attending M.I.T. or obtaining a doctorate, Jeff Holter was well on his way to becoming not “forever mediocre,” but rather a singularly accomplished scientist, thinker, and artist.49


1. Norman J. Holter, “The Genesis of Biotelemetry,” Biotelemetry (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1976), 13.

2. Norman Jefferis “Jeff ” Holter, interview by historian William L. Lang of the Montana Historical Society, December 1982–January 1983; OH 625, Montana Historical Society Archives (hereinafter referred to as N. J. Holter, Lang interview, MHS).

3. William C. Roberts, MD, “From the Editor: Who Was Holter?,” The American Journal of Cardiology, 52 (October 1, 1983).

4. “ISHNE About Us,” International Society for Holter and Noninvasive Electrocardiology (ISHNE) website, http://www.ishne.org/english/inicial_eng.htm

5. C. Craig Harris, “The Formation and Evolution of the Society of Nuclear Medicine,” Seminars in Nuclear Medicine, XXVI: 3 ( July 1996), 190.

6. N. J. Holter, Lang interview, MHS.

7. “Testimony of Dr. Joseph Heppert to the House Committee on Science,

Washington, DC, May 3, 2006,” http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full06/May%203/heppert.pdf

8. Ibid.

9. Timothy L. O’Brien, “Not Invented Here: Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?,” New York Times, November 13, 2005, 3:1.

10. Ibid., 3:6.

11. Ibid.

12. Quoted in O’Brien, “Not Invented Here,” New York Times, 3:6.

13. Harold L. Kennedy, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.C., F.E.S.C., “The History, Science, and Innovation of Holter Technology,” Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology, 11:1 ( January 2006), 93.

14. Quoted in William C. Roberts, MD, and Marc A. Silver, MD, “Norman Jefferis Holter and Ambulatory ECG Monitoring,” The American Journal of Cardiology, Vol. 52 (October 1, 1983), 903.

15. Mabel Roberts, “History of a Montana Pioneer,” The Mountain States

Monitor, June 1919, 12.

16. Anton M. Holter, “Narrative by A. M. Holter, Montana Pioneer, 1831–1921,” unpublished typescript.


18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.; Emil Starz, letter to Jeff Holter, Holter Research Foundation Records, Manuscript Collection 173, Box 3, Folder 2, Montana Historical Society Archives, Helena (hereinafter MC 173, MHS).

22. Emil Starz, letter to Jeff Holter, July 27, 1939, MC 173, Box 3, Folder 2, MHS.


24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. N. J. Holter, letters to Florence J. Holter, November 5 and December 19, 1927, Holter Family Records, Manuscript Collection 80, Box 32,

Notes


Folder 3, Montana Historical Society, Helena (hereinafter MC 80, MHS).

27. N. J. Holter, letter to Florence J. Holter, January 25, 1928, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.


29. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 161.

30. N. J. Holter, letter to Florence J. Holter, March 2, 1928, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

31. N. J. Holter, letter to Florence J. Holter, November 14, 1929, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

32. N. J. Holter, letters to Norman B. and Florence J. Holter, January 7 and January 25, 1930, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

33. Ellen Myers, letter to the Holter family, January 20, 1940, MC 173, Box 3, Folder 4, MHS.

34. Emil Starz, letter to N. J. Holter, June 1, 1931, MC 173, Box 3, Folder 2, MHS.

35. N. J. Holter, letter to Norman B. Holter, June 22, 1937, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

36. N. J. Holter, letter to Norman B. Holter, June 22–27, 1937, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

37. N. J. Holter, letter to Florence J. Holter, June 30, 1937, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

38. N. J. Holter, letter to Florence J. Holter, July 3, 1937, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

39. Doug Dowd, “Against Decadence: The Work of Robert A. Brady (1901–63),” Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Dec. 1994.


41. Ibid.


43. Ibid.


45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. N. J. Holter, letter to Norman B. Holter, August 5, 1937, MC 80, Box 32, Folder 3, MHS.

48. Ibid.

49. N. J. Holter, letter to “Dear People,” August 10–24, MC 173, Box 3, Folder 4, MHS.

from norman jefferis “jeff ” holter a serendipitous life: an essay in

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