A Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor conducted radiation experiments on scores of retarded students at the Fernald School in the 1940s and 1950s, documents show.

Clemens E. Benda, who was a faculty member at the Medical School until at least 1964, served as the medical director at the school for the retarded and oversaw the experiments, according to Benda's published study and Medical School records.

In the experiments, the retarded students were fed radioactive milk with their breakfast cereal. The studies, sponsored by the Quaker Oats Co., were designed to examine the students' nutrition and digestion.

Fernald residents who participated in the experiments were euphemistically called members of the "Science Club." They were not told about the radiation and were rewarded for their participation with candy, according to experts who have reviewed the studies.

Benda's study is one of many such government-sponsored experiments conducted across the country during the 1940s and 1950s that have been exposed in newspaper reports in recent weeks.

The reports of Harvard scientists' involvement have triggered a University investigation and sent professors and administrators scurrying to their file cabinets to uncover documents about the tests from half a century ago.

Benda, an internationally known authority on mental deficiency and Down's syndrome, died in 1975 at the age of 76.

"The most worrisome thing is that the parents were told the people experimented on were members of a big Science Club," said Dr. Lynn M. Peterson, Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School.

Peterson said the experiments were "clearly wrong...totally wrong."

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Richard Wilson yesterday said, "Of those people you may argue if they haven't gotten proper permission, their human rights have been violated. But that must be considered in the context of what were the mores of the time."

Wilson, an expert on radiation dangers, called yesterday for Harvard to investigate its own records to determine the extent of involvement by Harvard scientists in experiments like the ones at Fernald.

Wilson has been lobbying the U.S. Department ofEnergy as well to release its data on the tests,and yesterday he received the portions of Benda'spublished experiments and information about asecond study performed at Fernald in which theretarded students were given radioactive ironsupplements.

In his capacity as chief physician at the stateschool, Benda also would have supervised thesecond iron supplement study.

But Wilson and more than two dozen otherradiation experts interviewed this week sayHarvard was not a main hub for the radiationexperiments of the 1940s and 1950s.

There were a few scientists, however, who, likethe late Medical School professor Shields Warren,were on the forefront of radiation experimentationon humans.

Warren, who taught pathology at the MedicalSchool, was a pioneer in the study of thebiological effects of radiation and was famous forhis work on terminally ill cancer patients.