History
Pioneers and Leaders in Exercise Physiology:
Exercise physiology has at times been in the forefront of the advances made in basic science. The greatest respiratory physiologist of all time was the eighteenth-century Frenchman Antoine L Lavoisier, who used exercise to study physiology. lavoisier contributed more to the understanding of metabolism and respiration than anyone will ever again have the opportunity to do.
During the late nineteenth century in Germany, great strides were made in studying metabolism and nutrition under conditions of rest and exercise. Nathan Zuntz and his associates (including Schumburg and Geppert) were particularly important. Tables developed by Zuntz and Schumburg (1901) relating metabolic rate to 02 consumption, CO2 production, and amount of carbohydrate and fat used are essentially the same as those frequently referred to today by respiratory physiologists, exercise physiologists, and nutritionists. Work in exercise (Arbeits) physiology was also carried out in Germany, centered at the Max-Planck Institut für Arbeits physiologie. The Nazi regime and the events of World War II resulted in the emigration of many of these scientists to the United States, among them Ernst Simonsen (University of Minnesota) and Bruno Halke (University of Wisconsin).
In the early twentieth century, Francis C. Benedict and his associates, including Edward P. Cathcart and Henry M. Smith at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory in Boston, performed detailed studlies on metabolism on people at rest and during steady-rate exercise. The precision, thoroughness, and insightful interpretation of results by the Carnegie Nutrition group is seldom matched today. The works of Benedict and Cathcart (1913) on the efficiency of the body during cycling exercise and similar work by Smith (1922) on the efficiency of walking should be required reading for all graduate students specializing in exercise physiology.
