John B. West

John B. West ( born 1928 in Adelaide ) is an Australian- American physicians ( physiologist ), which dealt in particular with the lung function.

West was awarded in 1952 with a degree in medicine ( MBBS ) from the University of Adelaide, where he became in 1959 a doctorate (MD) and his specialist training began ( Internship ). Then he went to the Hammersmith Hospital in London for specialist medical training ( residency ), which he finished in 1960. There he was a member of the Respiratory Research Group, which had access to at that time new devices such as the cyclotron mass spectrometer and in research. In the same year he received his doctorate at the University of London ( Ph.D. ). 1961/62 he was a post-doctoral researcher at Hermann Rahn at the University of Buffalo and then again in London as Head of the Respiratory Research Group at the Postgraduate Medical School of the University of London. He became a Reader in 1968. After a sabbatical stay at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California in 1968, he became in 1969 professor of medicine and physiology at the University of California, San Diego.

At the Hammersmith Hospital in London, he studied with the help of artificially produced in a cyclotron isotopes ( such as oxygen -15), the local differences of blood flow and ventilation of the lungs. He examined the later also developed by him and Peter Wagner technology (Multiple Inert Gas Elimination Technique ) and in computer models. He also dealt with effects of gravity on the lung ( and gravity ) and physiological changes at high altitudes: 1960/61, he took as a physiologist part in a Himalayan expedition of Sir Edmund Hillary and 1981 he led the American Medical Research Expedition on Everest.

In 1977 he received the Ernst Jung Prize. In 1980 he was awarded a doctorate degree (D. Sc. ) Of the University of Adelaide.

1984/85 he was president of the American Physiological Society. He has U.S. citizenship.

Writings

• Respiratory Physiology -the Essentials, Baltimore, Williams and Wilkins 1974, 2nd edition 1980 ( also translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Iranian, Dutch, Malay )