Gofman and Tamplin were instrumental in inducing the health physics scientific community both to acknowledge the somatic (i.e. leukemia and cancer) risks of ionizing radiation, at a time when only the genetic risks were considered of significant concern, and to adopt the so-called Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model "as a means of numerically estimating actual cancer risks from low-level radiation", which "was a watershed event in radiation-safety science and politics". The LNT model has since become the foundation of the international guidelines for radiation protection.