Historic contributors to mammalian and bird hibernation research

Abstract

Sir Julian Huxley inspired students and scientists in 1939 by first reporting the hibernation of hummingbirds. Later, Kayser and Kalabukhov reviewed hibernation experiments done from 1824 to 1960 in their four books published between 1936 and 1960, as well as in a symposium at Harvard University in 1960. At that meeting, 26 papers were presented, and ready to comment on each paper was a distinguished panel consisting of Edward F. Adolph, Ladd Prosser, Donald R. Griffin, and George A. Bartholomew. At this meeting, a speaker, Paavo Suomalainen, invited all 45 participants to a hibernation symposium in Finland to be held a few years later. That symposium was also published. The next 40 years of hibernation research was covered by Charles Lyman, who published about five papers a year relating his experiments to others in the field. His frequent co‐author, Albert R. Dawe, also had a long career publishing his own experiments. The more modern workers, looking for a hormone‐like factor influencing hibernation, include Oeltgen and Dickson. We will discuss the important work of these and other investigators in an oral presentation to the History Group during the 2009 APS meeting.