Irving Porush ’39 has been posthumously inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame for his groundbreaking work in pharmaceutical delivery.

Working alongside George Maison and Charles Thiel, Porush helped create the pressurized metered dose inhaler (MDI) — the world’s first portable, metered delivery system for targeted lung medication to manage asthma and other conditions. The team worked at Riker Labs in Los Angeles in the 1950s, where they invented the MDI.

Porush earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and went on to earn a master’s degree in meteorology from the California Institute of Technology. During World War II, he was officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces, where he provided weather information to pilots who were ferrying bombers across the Atlantic Ocean.

Read full inductee biography on National Inventors Hall of Fame site.