He designed the Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit, a closed system using pure oxygen and fitted with a carbon dioxide filter, as a medical student in 1939.
It was initially rejected by the US Navy but, by 1942, was in use by the American Forces.
Within another year, the first fully automatic, open-circuit aqua-lung had been created over in Europe by Frenchman Jacques Cousteau and French-Canadian Emile Gagnan.
In connection with his design Dr Lambertsen, himself a keen diver, worked with the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, through WW2.
Developments of his units remained in use by the US Forces for another three decades.
He is also credited with having coined the term ‘scuba’, as the result of a paper co-written for the National Academy of Sciences in 1952.
It described the "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus", whose abbreviation has long since passed into diving’s vernacular.
Post-war, Dr Lambertsen worked at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
He became a professor of pharmacology and maintained a special interest in the respiratory system and diving physiology.
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