Max Rubner (2 June 1854,
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
27 April 1932,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
) was a German
physiologist and
hygienist.
Academic career
He studied at the
University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
and worked as an assistant under
Adolf von Baeyer
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (; 31 October 1835 – 20 August 1917) was a German chemist who synthesised indigo and developed a nomenclature for cyclic compounds (that was subsequently extended and adopted as part of the IUPAC org ...
and
Carl von Voit
Carl von Voit (31 October 1831 – 31 January 1908) was a German physiologist and dietitian.
Biography
Voit was born in Amberg, the son of August von Voit and Mathilde Burgett. From 1848 to 1854 he studied at the universities of Munich and W ...
(doctorate 1878). Later on, he taught as a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
at the
University of Marburg
The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...
(1885–1891), and in 1891 succeeded
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the bacteri ...
as a professor of hygiene at the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...
. In 1909 he succeeded
Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann
Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann (14 November 1843 – 20 May 1909) was a German botanist, physiologist, microbiologist, university professor, and musician whose 1882 experiment measured the effects of different colors of light on photosynthetic activity ...
as chair of physiology at Berlin. Rubner was co-founder of the ''
Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Arbeitsphysiologie'', and became its director in 1913. With his assistant Gerhard Albrecht, Rubner set out to study labour not just as the expenditure of energy, but also the use of intellect. They rejected
taylorism
Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineeri ...
as being over concerned with economic outputs, but rather advocated an approach which was more concerned with a biophysical approach to the elimination of fatigue.
Contributions
Rubner is remembered for his research in
metabolism
Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run c ...
, energy physiology, hygiene and dietary
thermogenesis
Thermogenesis is the process of heat production in organisms. It occurs in all warm-blooded animals, and also in a few species of thermogenic plants such as the Eastern skunk cabbage, the Voodoo lily ('' Sauromatum venosum''), and the giant w ...
. His best-known research centres on what he termed the "isodynamic law" of
calories (demonstrated in 1873, and published a decade later), according to which the form of human calorie intake is irrelevant to its effect on energy balance, often paraphrased as "a calorie is a calorie". In 1902, Rubner expressed his belief that this was over-simplistic, stating "the effect of specific nutritional substances upon the glands" may modify the effect of specific foods on energy balance, a view that is now increasingly accepted. With
Otto Heubner
Johann Otto Leonhard Heubner (January 21, 1843 – October 17, 1926) was a German internist and pediatrician who was a native of Mühltroff.
He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, and in 1867 became an assistant to Carl Reinhold Aug ...
(1843–1926), he performed important studies involving
energy metabolism
Bioenergetics is a field in biochemistry and cell biology that concerns energy flow through living systems. This is an active area of biological research that includes the study of the transformation of energy in living organisms and the study of ...
in infancy.
In 1883 Rubner introduced the "surface hypothesis", which stated that the
metabolic rate
Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run ce ...
of birds and mammals that maintain a steady body temperature is roughly proportional to their body surface area.
Eckert animal physiology
by David J. Randall, Warren W. Burggren, Kathleen French, Roger Eckert
Max Rubner is also known for his "rate-of-living theory", which proposed that a slow metabolism increases an animal's longevity. His observation was that larger animals outlived smaller animals and that the metabolic rates of larger animals were slower ''pro rata''. The theory might have been inspired by the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
by the logic that the more a machine is worked, the sooner it will wear out.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
Rubner, Max (1854–1932) -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography
at scienceworld.wolfram.com
Short biography and bibliography
in the Virtual Laboratory The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life. T ...
of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (German: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) is a scientific research institute founded in March 1994. It is dedicated to addressing fundamental questions of the history of knowledg ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rubner, Max
1854 births
1932 deaths
German physiologists
Hygienists
Physicians from Munich
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
Academic staff of the University of Marburg
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Max Planck Institute directors