Nathaniel Kleitman

Nathaniel Kleitman ( born April 26, 1895 in Chisinau, † August 13 1999 in Los Angeles ) was an American sleep researcher.

Kleitman was born in Russia ( in present-day Moldova) and emigrated in 1915 to the United States a. In 1918 he became a U.S. citizen. He studied at the City College of New York (Bachelor 1919) and Columbia University ( MA 1920). In 1923 he received his doctorate at the University of Chicago in physiology (summa cum laude). From 1925 he was on the faculty in Chicago, where he established the first sleep laboratory in the United States. He became a professor in Chicago, where he went in 1960 to retire and then moved to California. He also remained active thereafter in sleep research and published in 1982 an essay yet. Even at 90 years old, he participated as a voluntary subject on sleep in the ages at Stanford University. He died at the age of 104 years.

Kleitman regarded as the founder of the Sleep Research in the U.S., which he received his doctorate in 1923 in Chicago ( Studies on the physiology of sleep ), and in 1939 published the book Sleep and Wakefullness, then a standard work. In 1953 he was one of the discoverers of REM sleep. Originally found by his doctoral student Eugene Aserinsky, Kleitman and Aserinsky reported correlations according with dream phases. They released about 1953 in the journal Science. Another of his graduate students, who participated in these early research on REM sleep, was William Dement (later Professor and Head of the sleep laboratory at Stanford University). While Aserinsky 1953, the University of Chicago, left, Kleitman built with Dement in the 1950s, the sleep research among other things to REM sleep with the electroencephalogram and other measurements in his laboratory in Chicago. Often he used himself or his two daughters as test objects. Once he was standing by 180 hours of sleep. In 1938, he survived a month with colleagues in the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, to study the sleep patterns without external influences.

From him the hypothesis of a Basic Rest Activity Cycle comes ( BRAC ) of the brain, which is available both in the bedroom and in the waking periods.

Writings

• Sleep and wakefulness as alternating phases in the cycle of existence, University of Chicago Press, 1939. ( Revised reprint as Sleep and Wakefulness. 1963)