Abstract
After training in physics during World War II, I spent 2 years designing radar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then switched to biophysics. After medical school and a residency, I was doctor drafted to National Institutes of Health where I studied blood gas transport in hypothermia and developed the carbon dioxide electrode and the blood gas analyzer (pH, partial pressure of O2, and partial pressure of CO2). I joined the University of California San Francisco in 1958 in a new anesthesia department and new Cardiovascular Research Institute. My research aims were anesthesia patient monitoring, respiratory physiology, blood gas transport, and high-altitude acclimatization and pathology.
Highlights
After training in physics during World War II, I spent 2 years designing radar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and switched to biophysics
I doubted a paper that said carbon dioxide (CO2) excretion was blocked during human surgical hypothermia
I disproved it by measuring blood Partial pressure of CO2 (PCO2) at patient temperature using Van Slyke's manometric apparatus and a homemade temperature-controlled pH analyzer
Summary
During the APS fall meeting that year, in Iowa City, Comroe, newly appointed chair of a new University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Cardiovascular Research Institute, persuaded me to join him. I agreed instantly after he persuaded the chief of surgery at UCSF, by phone, to offer Stuart Cullen the chair of Anesthesia in a new independent (of surgery) department. We later studied the control of cerebral blood flow (CBF) at altitude, in each other, joined by Tom Hornbein [7] soon after his ascent of Everest by the West Ridge.
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