Knut Schmidt-Nielsen (September 24, 1915 – January 25, 2007) was a prominent figure in the field of

comparative physiology Comparative physiology is a List of academic disciplines, subdiscipline of physiology that studies and exploits the diversity of functional characteristics of various kinds of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary physiology and environ ...

and Professor of Physiology Emeritus at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

Background

Born in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, and ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. He was educated in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

and

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. He became a student in the laboratory of

August Krogh Schack August Steenberg Krogh (15 November 1874 – 13 September 1949) was a Danish professor at the department of zoophysiology at the University of Copenhagen from 1916 to 1945. He contributed a number of fundamental discoveries within severa ...

in Copenhagen in 1937. Schmidt-Nielsen moved to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, where he studied at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, and the

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine The University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center (AHC) is a collection of health colleges and institutions of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. It trains health care professionals and provides research and patient care. AHC has st ...

. He was the leader of expeditions to the Sahara Desert in 1953-54 and central Australia in 1962. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Trustee of Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory, and a consultant to the National Science Foundation.

Career

Schmidt-Nielsen published over 275 scientific papers and wrote the authoritative text on animal physiology. Schmidt-Nielsen is widely recognized as having made significant contributions to

ecophysiology Ecophysiology (from Greek , ''oikos'', "house(hold)"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia''), environmental physiology or physiological ecology is a biological discipline that studies the response of an organism's physiology to enviro ...

. He has been referred to as "the father of comparative physiology and integrative biology" and "one of the all-time greats of animal physiology". He came to

in 1952 and became a

James B. Duke Professor At Duke University, the title of James B. Duke Professor is given to a small number of the faculty with extraordinary records of achievement. At some universities, titles like "distinguished professor", "institute professor", or " regents professo ...

in the Department of Biology. In 1980, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen was elected President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences. He was the founding editor of ''News in Physiological Sciences''. He was a member of the

Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters ( da, Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab, DKNVS) is a Norwegian learned society based in Trondheim. It was founded in 1760 and is Norway's oldest scientific and scholarly institution. The ...

(1973), the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

(1979), the

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, the French Academy of Sciences and the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. Next to the Biological Science building on Duke's campus is a statue of Schmidt-Nielsen looking at a camel, honoring his more than twenty years of work studying and dispelling myths on how camels withstand the harsh desert environment. He was recipient of the 1992

International Prize for Biology The is an annual award for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of research in fundamental biology." The Prize, although it is not always awarded to a biologist, is one of the most prestigious honours a natural scientist can receive. Ther ...

awarded by the

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science The is an Independent Administrative Institution in Japan, established for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science in all fields of the natural and social sciences and the humanities.JSPSweb page History The Japan Society for ...

Books

*1972 ''How Animals Work'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *1975 ''Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment'' Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. *1979 ''Desert animals: Physiological problems of heat and water'' Dover Publications. *1984 ''Scaling: Why Is Animal Size So Important?'' Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press *1998 ''The Camel's Nose: Memoirs Of A Curious Scientist'' Washington, D.C: Island Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt Nielsen, Knut Norwegian physiologists American physiologists Foreign Members of the Royal Society Duke University faculty Members of the French Academy of Sciences 1915 births 2007 deaths Norwegian emigrants to the United States People from Trondheim Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters