Local newspapers ran banner headlines in 1958 announcing that “Space Medicine” was to be added at UT Memorial Hospital and Research Center. A year after Russia launched Sputnik and more than a decade before Neil Armstrong would walk on the moon, Dr. McChesney Goodall was appointed to the UT Research Center section of the University of Tennessee Memorial Research Center and Hospital to pursue his research in exploring the effects of outer space on humans.
Specializing in Neurophysiology, Goodall held the MD from the University of Virginia and the PhD from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. His work involved the study of the suitability of astronaut candidates for space flight. Goodall left UT in 1965. Dr. Robert Lange, who came to UTMRCH in 1964, focused on studying anemia in space. His experiments were placed aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle.