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MercurysBall2 ago

Joseph Barcroft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Barcroft

Sir Joseph Barcroft CBE FRS[1] (26 July 1872 – 21 March 1947) was a British physiologist best known for his studies of the oxygenation of blood. .. In the course of his research, he did not hesitate to use himself as a test subject. For example, during the First World War, when he was called to Royal Engineers Experimental Station (near Salisbury) to carry out experiments on asphyxiating gas, he exposed himself to an atmosphere of poisonous hydrogen cyanide. On another occasion he remained for seven days in a glass chamber in order to calculate the minimum quantity of oxygen required for the survival of the human organism, and another time he exposed himself to such a low temperature that he collapsed into unconsciousness.

Between 1902 and 1905 he was a Governor of Leighton Park School, the Quaker School in Reading. From 1925 to 1937 he held the chair of physiology at Cambridge. His final research, begun in 1933, concerned fetal respiration.

He was knighted in 1935.[4] He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1938.[6]

During the first years of the Second World War he was again summoned to Porton Down to consult on chemical weapons.