A. J. Carlson

Anton Julius Carlson (January 29, 1875–September 2, 1956) was a Swedish American physiologist. Carlson was Chairman of the Physiology Department at the University of Chicago from 1916 until 1940.

Biography

Carlson was born the son of Carl Jacobson and Hedvig Andersdotter in Svarteborg, in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. He came to the USA in 1891. He graduated from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois (BA,1898)(MS, 1899). He received a doctorate in physiology at Stanford in 1902 and began working at the University of Chicago in 1904. While Carlson was at Chicago, he conducted experiments on Fred Vlcek^[1], similar to those conducted on Alexis St. Martin by William Beaumont, regarding his gastric fistula. These included illuminating his stomach with electric lights in order to observe digestion. Carlson became chairman of the physiology department at the University of Chicago in 1916 and remained chairman until 1940.

Carlson was president of the American Physiological Society from 1923 to 1925 and president of the AAAS in 1944. Carlson was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1929. ^[2]

The cover story of the February 10, 1941 issue of Time Magazine was devoted to Carlson's success as a teacher and his comparative studies of the muscular action of the heart in humans and the horseshoe crab. In 1953, Carlson was the first person to receive the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award^[3].

Selected works

• The Control of Hunger In Health And Disease (University of Chicago Press. 1916)
• Organotherapeutics (D. Appleton and Company. 1924)
• The Machinery of the Body (University of Chicago Press. 1930)

References

1. ^ Contributions to the physiology of the stomach.—I. The character of the movements of the empty stomach in man, A. J. Carlson, American Journal of Physiology 31, #3 (December 2, 1912), pp. 151–168.
2. ^ Anton Julius Carlson (Soylent Communications) [1]
3. ^ Humanists of the Year, web page at the American Humanist Association web site, accessed January 11, 2007.

Other sources

• Dragstedt, Lester R Anton Julius Carlson, January 29, 1875 - September 2, 1956 (Biographical memoirs. National Academy of Sciences. 1961)

External links

• Carlson in The University of Chicago Faculty: A Centennial View
• Carlson as 10th president of the American Physiological Society
• Carlson page at the AAAS web site

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