John Scott Haldane

John Scott Haldane (1860-1936), British physiologist, born in Edinburgh, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Jena. After teaching physiology at the universities of Dundee and Oxford, Haldane became (1913) director of a mining research laboratory that was, after 1921, affiliated with the University of Birmingham. In order to learn about the mining and industrial diseases caused by poor ventilation, he conducted extensive research into respiration. Among his most important contributions to physiology were his discovery that breathing is regulated by the concentration of carbon dioxide in the respiratory center of the brain and his development of methods for determining the amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood. His writings include Materialism (1932) and The Philosophy of a Biologist (1935).