Max Kleiber (4 January 1893 – 5 January 1976)
was a Swiss agricultural biologist, born and educated in Zurich, Switzerland. Kleiber graduated from the

Federal Institute of Technology (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

as an Agricultural Chemist in 1920, earned the ScD degree in 1924, and became a private ''

dozent The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de co ...

'' after publishing his thesis ''The Energy Concept in the Science of Nutrition''. Kleiber joined the Animal Husbandry Department of

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the Uni ...

in 1929 to construct

respiration chambers Respiration may refer to: Biology * Cellular respiration, the process in which nutrients are converted into useful energy in a cell ** Anaerobic respiration, cellular respiration without oxygen ** Maintenance respiration, the amount of cellul ...

and conduct research on energy metabolism in animals. Among his many important achievements, two are especially noteworthy. In 1932 he came to the conclusion that the ¾ power of body weight was the most reliable basis for predicting the

basal metabolic rate Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of energy expenditure per unit time by endothermic animals at rest. It is reported in energy units per unit time ranging from watt (joule/second) to ml O2/min or joule per hour per kg body mass J/(h·kg). P ...

(BMR) of animals and for comparing nutrient requirements among animals of different size. He also provided the basis for the conclusion that total efficiency of energy utilization is independent of body size. These concepts and several others fundamental for understanding energy metabolism are discussed in Kleiber's book, ''

The Fire of Life ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in E ...

'' published in 1961 and subsequently translated into German, Polish, Spanish, and Japanese. He is credited with the description of the ratio of metabolism to body mass, which became

Kleiber's law Kleiber's law, named after Max Kleiber for his biology work in the early 1930s, is the observation that, for the vast majority of animals, an animal's basal metabolic rate, metabolic rate scales to the power of the animal's mass. Symbolically: if ...

Books

1961: The Fire of Life: An Introduction to Animal Energetics, Max Kleiber

Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada

References

External links

Max Kleiber Papers
a
Special Collections Dept.
University Library, University of California, Davis Swiss biologists 1893 births 1976 deaths University of California, Davis faculty 20th-century biologists {{biologist-stub