Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen (3 November 1918 – 27 April 2015) was a Danish-born American physiologist, who became the first woman president of the

American Physiological Society The American Physiological Society is a non-profit professional society for physiologists. It has nearly 10,000 members, most of whom hold doctoral degrees in medicine, physiology or other health professions. Its mission is to support research an ...

in 1975.

Biography

Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen was born in

Copenhagen, Denmark 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 ...

in 1918, the youngest of four children of two eminent physiologists, the Nobel Laureate

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 ...

and Marie Krogh. In 1939, Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen married

Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Knut Schmidt-Nielsen (September 24, 1915 – January 25, 2007) was a prominent figure in the field of comparative physiology and Professor of Physiology Emeritus at Duke University. Background Born in Trondheim, Norway. He was educated in Oslo a ...

, a fellow physiologist, and received doctoral degrees in Dentistry, Odontology, and Physiology from the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

. Knut and Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen became a prominent physiology team at Duke University, but divorced in 1966. Bodil became Department Chair at Case Western Reserve University and later devoted her career full-time to research at

MDI Biological Laboratory The MDI Biological Laboratory (MDIBL), formerly known as Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory is an independent non-profit biomedical research institution founded in 1898 and located in Salisbury Cove, Maine, on Mount Desert Island. Its mi ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

. Schmidt-Nielsen died in April 2015 at the age of 96.

Distinguished Mentor and Scientist Award

The Bodil M. Schmidt-Nielsen Distinguished Mentor and Scientist Award honors a member of the American Physiological Society who is judged to have made outstanding contributions to physiological research and demonstrated dedication and commitment to excellence in training of young physiologists.''Bodil M. Schmidt-Nielsen Distinguished Mentor and Scientist Award'' (American Physiological Society)

Selected works

* ''The Solubility of tooth substance in relation to the composition of saliva'' (Supplementum; v.2, 1946) * ''The resourcefulness of nature in physiological adaptation to the environment'' (Physiologist 1(2): 4-20, 1958) * ''August and Marie Krogh: Lives in Science'' (1995)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt-Nielsen, Bodil 1918 births 2015 deaths American physiologists Danish emigrants to the United States People from Copenhagen University of Copenhagen alumni Duke University faculty