John Pappenheimer

John Richard Pappenheimer ( born October 25, 1915 in New York; † December 9, 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was an American physiologist. He worked from 1949 to 1987 as a professor of physiology at Harvard University and in 1964/ 1965 as president of the American Physiological Society. For his research achievements, he was elected in 1965, among others, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Life

John Pappenheimer was born in 1915 in New York and obtained in 1936 a BS degree in biology at Harvard University. He then went to England, where in 1940 he at Clare College, University of Cambridge under the supervision of Frank Winton ( 1894-1985 ) earned a doctorate in physiology. After his return to the United States from 1940 to 1942 he was a research associate and lecturer in physiology at Columbia University. From 1942 to 1945 he worked for the Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics at the University of Pennsylvania in respiratory and night vision technology for use in military aircraft.

From 1946 he worked at the medical school of Harvard University, including since 1949 as an assistant professor, from 1953 as a full professor and from 1969 to 1987 as George Higginson Professor of Physiology. In the years 1964/1965 he served as president of the American Physiological Society. He was also a 1971/1972 Visiting Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge and 1975/1976 George Eastman Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.

After his retirement he was at the Concord Field Station of the University continue to work scientifically, his last scientific publication, he published in 2003 at the age of 88 years. He died in 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Private and family life

John Pappenheimer, who played cello, was married from 1949 until his death with a violinist and father of two sons and a daughter. His hobbies included not only the music, cycling, hiking, mountain climbing, gardening as well as skiing and tennis. His son, Will Pappenheimer (* 1954) works as an artist in the field of multimedia and as a professor of digital media at Pace University. His father Alwin M. Pappenheimer senior (1878-1955) served as a pathologist at Columbia University. His brother Alwin M. Pappenheimer Jr., a professor of biology and president of the American Association of Immunologists, and his sister Anne Pappenheimer Forbes (1911-1992), a professor of medicine, who worked at Harvard University.

Scientific work

John Pappenheimer devoted himself as part of his research including the investigation of permeability, the pressure conditions and fluid movements in capillaries, the gas composition in the alveoli and in respiratory dead space and the autoregulation of blood flow and glomerular filtration in the renal corpuscles. Other contributions he made in the field of chemical regulation of breathing, cerebrospinal fluid and ion exchange as well as the sleep control. After his retirement, he examined the uptake of sugars and amino acids in the intestine.

Awards

John Pappenheimer was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1965, as eight years later, his brother, to the National Academy of Sciences in 1954. From the American Heart Association, he was appointed in 1953 to lifelong Career Investigator. The American Physiological Society awarded him in 1971 the Carl J. Wiggers - Award for his research in the field of cardiovascular physiology and 1979 the Ray G. Daggs - Award for his contributions to the field physiology. The British Physiological Society elected him an honorary member in 1981.

Works (selection)

• Handbook of Physiology. Different volumes (as a member of the editorial board from 1961 to 1966 and from 1972 to 1978 )
• Membrane Transport: People and Ideas. Bethesda MD 1989 ( co-author )