John Scott Haldane

For another British physiologist, see John Burdon Sanderson Haldane.
John Scott Haldane
FRS
Born(1860-05-02)2 May 1860
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died14 March 1936(1936-03-14) (aged 75)
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
EducationEdinburgh Academy
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
Friedrich Schiller University of Jena
Known forBlack Veil Respirator
Haldane effect
Haldane's decompression model
SpouseLouisa Kathleen Coutts Trotter
ChildrenJ. B. S. Haldane
Naomi Mitchison
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society, member of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of Medicine; many honorary degrees
Scientific career
FieldsPhysiology, medicine
InstitutionsUniversity of Glasgow
New College, Oxford
University of Birmingham
For other people named John Haldane, see John Haldane (disambiguation).

John Scott Haldane CH FRS[1] (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 2 May 1860 – 14/15 March 1936) was a British physician physiologist and philosopher famous for intrepid self-experimentation which led to many important discoveries about the human body and the nature of gases.[2] He also experimented on his son, the celebrated and polymathic biologist J. B. S. Haldane, even when he was quite young.[3] Haldane locked himself in sealed chambers breathing potentially lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body.[4]

Haldane visited the scenes of many mining disasters and investigated their causes.[2][5] When the Germans used poison gas in World War I, Haldane went to the front at the request of Lord Kitchener and attempted to identify the gases being used. One outcome of this was his invention of a respirator, known as the black veil.[2][6][4]

Haldane's investigations into decompression sickness resulted in the concept of staged decompression, and the first reasonably reliable decompression tables, and his mathematical model is still used in highly modified forms for computing decompression schedules.[2][4]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference frs was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b c d Acott, C. (1999). "JS Haldane, JBS Haldane, L Hill, and A Siebe: A brief resume of their lives". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 29 (3). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 12 July 2008.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ^ BBC radio interview, Third Programme, 1960.
  4. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Lang and Brubakk 2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Goodman, Martin (2007). Suffer and Survive: Gas Attacks, Miners' Canaries, Spacesuits, and the Bends: the Extreme Life of Dr. J.S. Haldane. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-8597-1.
  6. ^ Obituary. Professor J. S. Haldane. dmm.org.uk. 16 March 1936